Observation of Single Top Quark Production at D0

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of single top quark production via electroweak interaction at the Fermilab Tevatron, measuring a cross section with high statistical significance.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of electroweak single top quark production at the Tevatron with a precise cross section measurement.

Findings

Measured single top quark production cross section: 3.94 ± 0.88 pb

Observed a 5.0 sigma significance for the signal

Probability of background fluctuation at this level: 2.5×10^-7

Abstract

This paper presents the observation of the electroweak production of single top quarks in the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. Events containing an isolated electron or muon and missing transverse energy, together with jets originating from the fragmentation of b quarks are used to measure a cross section for single top quark production of sigma(ppbar -> tb + X, tqb + X) = 3.94 +- 0.88 pb. The probability to measure a cross section at this value or higher in the absence of signal is 2.5X10^-7, corresponding to a 5.0 standard deviation significance.