Measurement of the $\ttbar$ Production Cross Section in $\ppbar$ Collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV Using Lepton Plus Jets Events with Semileptonic B Decays to Muons

TL;DR

This paper reports a measurement of the top-antitop quark pair production cross section in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV, using lepton plus jets events with semileptonic B decays, based on CDF II data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to identify $ tbar$ events via jets with semileptonic B decays to muons, providing a new measurement consistent with the standard model.

Findings

Measured cross section: 5.3 pb with uncertainties.

Used 194 pb^{-1} of data from CDF II.

Backgrounds estimated directly from data.

Abstract

We present a measurement of the $\ttbar$ production cross section using $194 \mathrm{pb^{-1}}$ of CDF II data using events with a high transverse momentum electron or muon, three or more jets, and missing transverse energy. The measurement assumes 100% $t\to Wb$ branching fraction. Events consistent with $\ttbar$ decay are found by identifying jets containing heavy flavor semileptonic decays to muons. The dominant backgrounds are evaluated directly from the data. Based on 20 candidate events and an expected background of 9.5$\pm$1.1 events, we measure a production cross section of $5.3\pm3.3^{+1.3}_{-1.0} \mathrm{pb}$, in agreement with the standard model.