Improved determination of the sample composition of dimuon events produced in {\boldmath $p\bar{p}$} collisions at {\boldmath $\sqrt{s}=1.96$} TeV

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to accurately estimate pion and kaon decay contributions in dimuon events from proton-antiproton collisions, revealing that known sources do not fully explain the observed data.

Contribution

A novel approach to quantify in-flight-decay contributions, improving understanding of dimuon event composition at TeV energies.

Findings

In-flight-decay contributions are precisely estimated with 5% accuracy.

Known sources do not fully account for the total dimuon events.

The properties of dimuon events suggest additional, unidentified sources.

Abstract

We use a new method to estimate with 5% accuracy the contribution of pion and kaon in-flight-decays to the dimuon data set acquired with the CDF detector. Based on this improved estimate, we show that the total number and the properties of the collected dimuon events are not yet accounted for by ordinary sources of dimuons which also include the contributions, as measured in the data, of heavy flavor, $\Upsilon$, and Drell-Yan production in addition to muons mimicked by hadronic punchthrough.