The inclusive WZ production cross section is measured in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV, using data collected during 2022 with the CMS detector, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34.7 fb$^{−1}$. The measurement uses multileptonic final states and a simultaneous likelihood fit to the number of events in four different lepton flavour categories: eee, eeμ, μμe, and μμμ. The selection is optimized to minimize the number of background events, and relies on an efficient prompt lepton discrimination strategy. The WZ production cross section is measured in a phase space defined within a 30 GeV window around the Z boson mass, as σ$_{total}$ (pp → WZ) = 55.2 ± 1.2 (stat) ± 1.2 (syst) ± 0.8 (lumi) ± 0.3 (theo) pb. In addition, the cross section is measured in a fiducial phase space closer to the detector-level requirements. All the measurements presented in this paper are in agreement with standard model predictions.[graphic not available: see fulltext]
Benecke, A., Bethani, A., Bruno, G., Caputo, C., de Favereau de Jeneret, J., Delaere, C., Donertas, I. S., Giammanco, A., Guzel, A. O., Jain, S., Jain, S., Lemaitre, V., Lidrych, J., Mastrapasqua, P., Tran, T. T., Turkcapar, S., CMS, & et al. (2025). Measurement of the inclusive WZ production cross section in pp collisions at $ \sqrt{\textrm{s}} $ = 13.6 TeV. Journal of High Energy Physics, 04. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2025)115 (Original work published 2025)