Measurement of ttbar production in the tau + jets topology using ppbar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV

TL;DR

This paper measures the top-antitop production cross section in events where a tau lepton decays semihadronically plus jets at 1.96 TeV, confirming consistency with standard model predictions.

Contribution

It provides the first measurement of ttbar production in the tau + jets topology at Tevatron energies, using 1 fb^(-1) of data with detailed cross section extraction.

Findings

Measured sigma_ttbar * BR = 0.60 pb with uncertainties.

Extracted sigma_ttbar = 6.9 pb with uncertainties.

Results agree with standard model predictions.

Abstract

We present a measurement of the ttbar production cross section multiplied by the branching ratio to tau lepton decaying semihadronically plus jets, at a center of mass energy sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV using 1 fb^(-1) of integrated luminosity collected with the D0 detector. Assuming a top quark mass of 170 GeV, we measure sigma_ttb * BR=0.60^{+0.23}_{-0.22} (stat) ^{+0.15}_{-0.14} (syst) +/- 0.04\;(lumi) pb. In addition, we extract the ttbar production cross section using the ttbar->tau+jets topology, with the result sigma_ttbar = 6.9_{-1.2}^{+1.2} (stat)_{-0.7}^{+0.8} (syst) \pm 0.4 (lumi) pb. These findings are in good agreement with standard model predictions and measurements performed using other top quark decay channels.