Evidence for t\bar{t}\gamma Production and Measurement of \sigma_t\bar{t}\gamma / \sigma_t\bar{t}

TL;DR

This paper reports the first evidence for top-quark pair production with an additional photon at the Tevatron, measuring the cross section and ratio to standard ttbar production, consistent with Standard Model predictions.

Contribution

First measurement of ttbar+photon production cross section and ratio at the Tevatron, providing experimental evidence for this rare process.

Findings

Observed 30 candidate events against an expectation of 26.9 ± 3.4.

Measured cross section: 0.18+0.08 pb.

Ratio of ttbar+photon to ttbar: 0.024 ± 0.009.

Abstract

Using data corresponding to 6.0/fb of ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV collected by the CDF II detector, we present a cross section measurement of top-quark pair production with an additional radiated photon. The events are selected by looking for a lepton, a photon, significant transverse momentum imbalance, large total transverse energy, and three or more jets, with at least one identified as containing a b quark. The ttbar+photon sample requires the photon to have 10 GeV or more of transverse energy, and to be in the central region. Using an event selection optimized for the ttbar+photon candidate sample we measure the production cross section of, and the ratio of cross sections of the two samples. Control samples in the dilepton+photon and lepton+photon+$\met$, channels are constructed to aid in decay product identification and background measurements. We observe 30 ttbar+photon candidate events compared to the standard model expectation of 26.9 +/- 3.4 events. We measure the ttbar+photon cross section to be 0.18+0.08 pb, and the ratio of the cross section of ttbar+photon to ttbar to be 0.024 +/- 0.009. Assuming no ttbar+photon production, we observe a probability of 0.0015 of the background events alone producing 30 events or more, corresponding to 3.0 standard deviations.