Updated Measurement of the Single Top Quark Production Cross Section and $V{tb}$ in the Missing Transverse Energy Plus Jets Topology in $p\bar{p}$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 1.96$ TeV

TL;DR

This paper reports an updated measurement of the single top quark production cross section and the CKM matrix element V_{tb} using the full CDF dataset, focusing on events with missing transverse energy and jets, improving previous results.

Contribution

It provides the most precise measurement to date of the single top quark production cross section and V_{tb} in the missing energy plus jets topology at the Tevatron.

Findings

Measured combined single top cross section: 3.02 pb

Lower limit on V_{tb}: 0.84 at 95% credibility

Improved precision over previous measurements

Abstract

An updated measurement of the single top quark production cross section is presented using the full data set collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) and corresponding to 9.5 fb${}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity from proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy. The events selected contain an imbalance in the total transverse energy, jets identified as originating from $b$ quarks, and no identified leptons. The sum of the $s$- and $t$-channel single top quark cross sections is measured to be $3.53_{-1.16}^{+1.25}$ pb and a lower limit on $V_{tb}$ of 0.63 is obtained at the 95% credibility level. These measurements are combined with previously reported CDF results obtained from events with an imbalance in total transverse energy, jets identified as originating from $b$ quarks, and exactly one identified lepton. The combined cross section is measured to be $3.02_{-0.48}^{+0.49}$ pb and a lower limit on $V{tb}$ of 0.84 is obtained at the 95% credibility level.