Very high precision tests of the electroweak theory

A measurement of the effective sin2 θW with a precision of 6 × 10−5 appears to be possible via a measurement of the charge asymmetry in the process pp → Z0X → μ+μ−X at the LHC. This measurement would be sensitive to the nature of the electroweak symmetry breaking, for example determining the mass of a single Higgs boson to 10% precision. The sensitivity and systematic uncertainties of this experiment are discussed in this paper. Such a measurement would be complementary to the direct Higgs boson search in pp → HX and would provide an important check of the consistency and completeness of the theory.