Measurement of the ratio of the $p\bar{p}\to W$+$c$-jet cross section to the inclusive $p\bar{p}\to W$+jets cross section

Abstract

We present a measurement of the fraction of inclusive $W$+jets events produced with net charm quantum number $\pm 1$, denoted $W$+$c$-jet, in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV using approximately 1~fb${}^{-1}$ of data collected by the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We identify the $W$+jets events via the leptonic $W$ boson decays. Candidate $W$+$c$-jet events are selected by requiring a jet containing a muon in association with a reconstructed $W$ boson and exploiting the charge correlation between this muon and $W$ boson decay lepton to perform a nearly model-independent background subtraction. We measure the fraction of $W$+$c$-jet events in the inclusive $W$+jets sample for jet $p_T>20$ GeV and pseudorapidity $|\eta |<2.5$ to be 0.074$\pm 0.019$(stat.)${\pm }_{0.014}^{0.012}$(syst.), in agreement with theoretical predictions. The probability that background fluctuations could produce the observed fraction of $W$+$c$-jet events is estimated to be $2.5\times 10^{-4}$, which corresponds to a 3.5 $\sigma$ statistical significance.

submitted to Physics Letters B

References in corpus (1)

• Evidence for production of single top quarks and first direct measurement of |Vtb|

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Review of Properties of the Top Quark from Measurements at the Tevatron