PT Journal AU ATLAS Collaboration (Aad, Gea Alvarez Piqueras, D Aparisi Pozo, JA Bailey, AJ Barranco Navarro, L Cabrera Urban, S Castillo, FL Castillo Gimenez, V Cerda Alberich, L Costa, MJ Escobar, C Estrada Pastor, O Ferrer, A Fiorini, L Fullana Torregrosa, E Fuster, J Garcia, C Garcia Navarro, JE Gonzalez de la Hoz, S Higon-Rodriguez, E Jimenez Pena, J Lacasta, C Lozano Bahilo, JJ Madaffari, D Mamuzic, J Marti-Garcia, S Melini, D MiƱano, M Mitsou, VA Rodriguez Bosca, S Rodriguez Rodriguez, D Ruiz-Martinez, A Salt, J Santra, A Soldevila, U Sanchez, J Valero, A Valls Ferrer, JA Vos, M TI Z boson production in Pb plus Pb collisions at root S-NN=5.02 TeV measured by the ATLAS experiment SO Physics Letters B JI Phys. Lett. B PY 2020 BP 135262 EP 23pp VL 802 DI 10.1018/j.physletb.2020.135262 LA English AB The production yield of Z bosons is measured in the electron and muon decay channels in Pb+Pb collisions at /S-NN = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector. Data from the 2015 LHC run corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 0.49 nb(-1) are used for the analysis. The Z boson yield, normalised by the total number of minimum-bias events and the mean nuclear thickness function, is measured as a function of dilepton rapidity and event centrality. The measurements in Pb+Pb collisions are compared with similar measurements made in proton-proton collisions at the same centre-of-mass energy. The nuclear modification factor is found to be consistent with unity for all centrality intervals. The results are compared with theoretical predictions obtained at next-to-leading order using nucleon and nuclear parton distribution functions. The normalised Z boson yields in Pb+Pb collisions lie 1-3a above the predictions. The nuclear modification factor measured as a function of rapidity agrees with unity and is consistent with a next-to-leading-order QCD calculation including the isospin effect. ER