Single top quark production at the Tevatron

TL;DR

This paper reports evidence for single top quark production at the Tevatron, using advanced multivariate analysis techniques on datasets up to 2.2fb^-1, and measures the CKM matrix element |Vtb| directly.

Contribution

It presents the first direct measurement of |Vtb| from single top production and demonstrates the effectiveness of multivariate methods in extracting signals from large backgrounds.

Findings

Evidence for single top quark production established.

First direct measurement of |Vtb| obtained.

Multivariate techniques successfully extracted the signal.

Abstract

The Tevatron experiments D0 and CDF have found evidence for single top quark production, based on datasets between 0.9fb-1 and 2.2fb^-1. Several different multivariate techniques are used to extract the single top quark signal out of the large backgrounds. The cross section measurements are also used to provide the first direct measurement of the CKM matrix element |Vtb|.