Study of the heavy flavor content of jets produced in association with W bosons in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.8 TeV

TL;DR

This study analyzes the heavy flavor content in W+jets events at Fermilab, finding general agreement with the standard model but an excess of events with both a soft lepton and secondary vertex tag in certain jet samples.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of heavy flavor signatures in W+jets events with standard model predictions, highlighting an unexpected excess in specific event categories.

Findings

Good agreement with standard model in most measurements

An excess of events with both soft lepton and secondary vertex tags in W+2,3 jet samples

Kinematic properties of excess events are difficult to explain with current models

Abstract

We present a detailed examination of the heavy flavor content of the $W $ + jet data sample collected with the CDF detector during the 1992-1995 collider run at the Fermilab Tevatron. Jets containing heavy flavor quarks are selected via the identification of secondary vertices or semileptonic decays of $b$ and $c$ quarks. There is generally good agreement between the rates of secondary vertices and soft leptons in the data and in the standard model simulation including single and pair production of top quarks. An exception is the number of events in which a single jet has both a soft lepton and a secondary vertex tag. In $W +$ 2,3 jet data, we find 13 such events where we expected 4.4 $\pm$ 0.6 events. The kinematic properties of this small sample of events are statistically difficult to reconcile with the simulation of standard model processes.