Measurements of single top quark production cross sections and |Vtb| in ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of single top quark production cross sections in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, providing insights into the CKM matrix element |Vtb| and testing Standard Model predictions.

Contribution

First measurement of single top quark production cross sections and |Vtb| in proton-antiproton collisions at this energy with detailed event selection and analysis.

Findings

Measured inclusive cross section of 3.43 pb with uncertainties.

Extracted |Vtb| between 0.79 and 1 at 95% confidence level.

Separated cross sections for tb and tqb production modes.

Abstract

We present measurements of production cross sections of single top quarks in $\ppbar$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96\;\rm TeV$ in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $5.4\;\rm fb^{-1}$ collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We select events with an isolated electron or muon, an imbalance in transverse energy, and two, three, or four jets, with one or two of them containing a bottom hadron. We obtain an inclusive cross section of $\sigma({\ppbar}{\rargap}tb+X, tqb+X) = 3.43\pm^{0.73}_{0.74}\;\rm pb$ and use it to extract the CKM matrix element $0.79 < |V_{tb}| \leq 1$ at the 95% C.L. We also measure $\sigma({\ppbar}{\rargap}tb+X) = 0.68\pm^{0.38}_{0.35}\;\rm pb$ and $\sigma({\ppbar}{\rargap}tqb+X) = 2.86\pm^{0.69}_{0.63}\;\rm pb$ when assuming, respectively, $tqb$ and $tb$ production rates as predicted by the standard model.