Measurement of the Top Quark Mass with the Collider Detector at Fermilab

TL;DR

This paper reports a precise measurement of the top quark mass using data from proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab, employing multiple decay channels and likelihood fitting techniques to achieve a combined mass estimate.

Contribution

It presents the first combined measurement of the top quark mass across different decay channels using the CDF detector data from Fermilab.

Findings

Top quark mass measured as 176.1 ± 6.6 GeV/c^2

Likelihood fit method applied to reconstructed mass distributions

Combines multiple decay channels for improved precision

Abstract

This report describes a measurement of the top quark mass in $\ppbar$ collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.8 TeV. The data sample was collected with the CDF detector during the 1992--95 collider run at the Fermilab Tevatron, and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 106 \pb. Candidate $t\bar{t}$ events in the ``lepton+jets'' decay channel provide our most precise measurement of the top quark mass. For each event a top mass is determined by using energy and momentum constraints on the production of the $\ttbar$ pair and its subsequent decay. A likelihood fit to the distribution of reconstructed masses in the data sample gives a top mass in the lepton+jets channel of $176.1\pm 5.1 (stat.)\pm 5.3 (syst.) \gevcc$. Combining this result with measurements from the ``all-hadronic'' and ``dilepton'' decay topologies yields a top mass of $176.1\pm 6.6 \gevcc$.