Top quark-anti-top quark production cross section measurement using soft electron tagging in proton-anti-proton collisions at center of mass energy= 1.96 TeV
By: by John Paul Chou
Published: 2008
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
Description: We measure the production cross section of tt¯ events in pp¯ collisions at [Special characters omitted.] = 1.96 TeV. The data was collected by the CDF experiment in Run 2 of the Tevatron accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory between 2002 and 2007. 1.7 fb -1 of data was recorded during this time period. We reconstruct tt¯ events in the lepton+jets channel, whereby one W boson--resulting from the decay of the top quark pairs--decays leptonically and the other hadronically. The dominant background to this process is the production of W bosons in association with multiple jets. To distinguish tt¯ from background, we identify soft electrons from the semileptonic decay of heavy flavor jets produced in tt¯ events. We measure a cross section of σ pp¯ = 7.8 ± 2.4(stat) ± 1.6(syst) ± 0.5(lumi).
Notes: "September 2008."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of Physics)--Harvard University, 2008.

Includes bibliographical references.