Measurement of the $\ttbar$ Production Cross Section in 2 fb$^{-1}$ of $\ppbar$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV Using Lepton Plus Jets Events with Soft Muon b-Tagging

TL;DR

This paper measures the top-antitop quark pair production cross section in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV using lepton plus jets events with soft muon b-tagging, analyzing 2 fb$^{-1}$ of data.

Contribution

It introduces a measurement of the $ tbar$ production cross section using a novel soft muon b-tagging technique in lepton plus jets events.

Findings

Measured cross section: 9.1 ± 1.6 pb.

Analyzed 248 candidate events.

Expected background: 79.5 ± 5.3 events.

Abstract

We present a measurement of the $\ttbar$ production cross section in $\ppbar$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV using events containing a high transverse momentum electron or muon, three or more jets, and missing transverse energy. Events consistent with $\ttbar$ decay are found by identifying jets containing candidate heavy-flavor semileptonic decays to muons. The measurement uses a CDF Run II data sample corresponding to $2 \mathrm{fb^{-1}}$ of integrated luminosity. Based on 248 candidate events with three or more jets and an expected background of $79.5\pm5.3$ events, we measure a production cross section of $9.1\pm 1.6 \mathrm{pb}$.