# Measurement of the single top quark and antiquark production cross sections in the $t$ channel and their ratio at 13 TeV

## TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of the production cross sections of single top quarks and antiquarks in the t-channel at 13 TeV, providing insights into proton structure and CKM matrix elements.

## Contribution

It presents the first measurement of the ratio of top quark to antiquark cross sections in the t-channel at 13 TeV using CMS data, improving understanding of proton PDFs and CKM parameters.

## Key findings

- Measured cross sections for top quark and antiquark production.
- Determined the ratio of these cross sections.
- Provided data to test parton distribution functions.

## Abstract

The electroweak production in the $t$ channel is the most dominant production mode of single top quarks at the LHC. The ratio of the cross sections of the top quark and antiquark production provides an insight into the inner structure of the proton and is therefore suitable to study different parton distribution function predictions. This process can also be used for a direct measurement of the absolute value of the CKM matrix element $V_\mathrm{tb}$ . The most recent measurement of the CMS Collaboration is presented with the 2016 data set of the LHC Run II at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. Events with one muon or one electron are considered in this analysis. Lepton-flavor dependent multivariate discriminators are applied to separate signal from background events.