Measurements of the Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section and Branching Ratio to a W-boson and Bottom Quark Using the Semi-leptonic and Dilepton Final States with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC
Author: Robert E. Calkins
Publisher:
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 9781267906960
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAbstract : In the Standard Model, the top quark plays a unique role as the heaviest known fundamental particle and as a quark that decays before it is able to hadronize. Top quarks are expected to decay to a W-boson and a b-quark nearly 100% of the time. If the branching ratio of t → Wb is lower than one, the distribution of the number of b-tagged jets will shift to lower multiplicities. A simultaneous likelihood fit to the number of b-tagged jets distributions in the lepton+jets and dilepton channels is performed on 4.7 fb−1 of data collected by the ATLAS detector to extract both the branching ratio and the tt ̄ cross section. The branching ratio of t → Wb, R, is measured to be 1.06±0.11, which is consistent with the Standard Model value. This is the first measurement of the t → Wb branching ratio performed with the ATLAS detector using both the lepton+jets and dilepton channels at the LHC. The tt ̄ cross section is measured to be [special characters omitted] pb, which agrees with NNLO predictions.