Measurement of the ttbar production cross section in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV in dilepton final states containing one tau lepton

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of the top-quark pair production cross section in proton-proton collisions at 8 TeV, focusing on final states with one electron or muon and one hadronic tau, using CMS data.

Contribution

It provides a new measurement of the ttbar cross section in dilepton final states with tau leptons at 8 TeV, consistent with Standard Model predictions.

Findings

Measured cross section: 257 pb with uncertainties

Results agree with Standard Model predictions

Uses 19.6 fb^-1 of CMS data

Abstract

The top-quark pair production cross section is measured in final states with one electron or muon and one hadronically decaying tau lepton from the process ttbar to (l nu[l]) (tau nu[tau]) bbbar, where l = e, mu. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.6 inverse femtobarns collected with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. The measured cross section sigma[ttbar] = 257 +/- 3 (stat) +/- 24 (syst) +/- 7 (lumi) pb, assuming a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV, is consistent with the standard model prediction.