Measurement of the Top Quark Mass by Application of the Dalitz-Goldstein Method to Dilepton Events
Author: Kristo Michael Karr
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 282
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis dissertation presents a measurement of the top quark mass by application of the Dalitz-Goldstein method to dilepton tt ̄ events. The events were produced by the Tevatron Collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) via pp ̄ collisions with s = 1.8 TeV. The dilepton event sample was extracted from 109 pb --1 of data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) from August 1992 to July 1995. The sample contains a total of 9 candidate events, 2.4 of which are expected from background. Included in the dilepton final state are two neutrinos, which elude detection. This analysis constrains the problem by assuming an initial value for the top quark mass and solving for the neutrino momenta via a geometrical construction developed by D. H. Dalitz and G. Goldstein. The top quark mass is sampled over a wide range of possible values and the most likely mass consistent with the data is chosen via a likelihood function. An important distinguishing feature of this mass fitting technique is its lack of dependence on missing transverse energy, a kinematic variable that is poorly measured by experiment. This analysis determines the top quark mass to be Mtop = 157.1 +/- 10.9(stat.) +/- 4.33.7 (syst.) GeV/c2.