Measurement of the ttbar Production Cross Section in ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV Using Kinematic Fitting of $b$-tagged Lepton+Jet Events

TL;DR

This paper measures the top-antitop quark pair production cross section at the Fermilab Tevatron using kinematic fitting and b-tagging techniques, providing results consistent with the Standard Model.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining kinematic fitting and b-tagging to measure the ttbar production cross section in proton-antiproton collisions.

Findings

Measured cross section: 6.0+-1.6(stat.)+-1.2(syst.) pb

Data sample: 162+-10 /pb of proton-antiproton collisions

Results agree with Standard Model predictions

Abstract

We report a measurement of the ttbar production cross section using the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. The data consist of events with an energetic electron or muon, missing transverse energy, and three or more hadronic jets, at least one of which is identified as a b-quark jet by reconstructing a secondary vertex. The background fraction is determined from a fit of the transverse energy of the leading jet. Using 162+-10 /pb of data, the total cross section is found to be 6.0+-1.6(stat.)+-1.2(syst.) pb, which is consistent with the Standard Model prediction.