Measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV in dilepton final states containing a tau

TL;DR

This paper reports the first measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV, specifically including events with a tau lepton, electron or muon, and their decay products, using CMS data.

Contribution

It introduces the first measurement of the top quark pair production cross section explicitly involving tau leptons at 7 TeV.

Findings

Measured cross section: 143 +/- 14 (stat) +/- 22 (syst) +/- 3 (lumi) pb.

Result is consistent with standard model predictions.

Utilizes dilepton events with tau decays in CMS detector data.

Abstract

The top quark pair production cross section is measured in dilepton events with one electron or muon, and one hadronically decaying tau lepton from the decay t anti-t to (l nu(l)) (tau nu(tau)) b anti-b, where l can be either an electron or a muon. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.0 inverse femtobarns for the electron channel and 2.2 inverse femtobarns for the muon channel, collected by the CMS detector at the LHC. This is the first measurement of the t anti-t cross section explicitly including tau leptons in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV. The measured value sigma(t anti-t) = 143 +/- 14 (stat.) +/- 22 (syst.) +/- 3 (lumi.) pb is consistent with the standard model predictions.