Measurement of the charge asymmetry in top-antitop quark production with the CDF II experiment
The Fermi National Laboratory (Fermilab) operates the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at a center-of-mass energy of {radical}s = 1.96 TeV, the is therefore the only collider which is today able to produce the heaviest known particle, the top quark. The top quark was discovered at the Tevatron by the CDF and D0 collaborations in 1995. At the Tevatron, most top quarks are produced via the strong interaction, whereby quark-antiquark annihilation dominates with 85%, and gluon fusion contributes with 15%. Considering next-to-leading order (NLO) contributions in the cross section of top-antitop quark production, leads to a slight positive asymmetry in the differential distribution of the production angle {alpha} of the top quarks. This asymmetry is due to the interference of certain NLO contributions. The charge asymmetry A in the cosine of {alpha} is predicted [14] to amount to 4-6%. Information about the partonic rest frame, necessary for a measurement of A in the observable cos {alpha}, is not accessible in the experiment. Thus, they use the rapidity difference of the top and the antitop quark as sensitive variable. This quantity offers the advantage of Lorentz invariance and is uniquely correlated with the cosine of {alpha}, justifying the choice of the rapidity difference to describe the behavior of cos {alpha}. In preparation for a measurement of the charge asymmetry, they conduct several Monte Carlo based studies concerning the effect of different event selection criteria on the asymmetry in the selected event samples. They observe a strong dependence of the measured asymmetry on the number of required jets in the particular event sample. This motivates further studies to understand the influence of additional gluon radiation, which leads to more than four observed jets in an event, on the rapidity distribution of the produced top quarks. They find, that events containing hard gluon radiation are correlated with a strong negative shift of the rapidity distribution of the top quarks. This leads to large negative values of the charge asymmetry in event samples that contain only events with exactly five, six or more jets. This finding requires a modification of the original analysis strategy, since an asymmetry measured in an inclusive sample will be a composition of the asymmetry in the four-jets and five-jets sub-samples. Therefore, they perform for the first time a measurement of the asymmetry separately in the exclusive four- and five-jets sub-samples to separate the contribution of hard gluon radiation to the asymmetry. They analyze a data sample, collected by the CDF II detector in the years 2002-2006, that corresponds to an integrated luminosity of about 955 pb{sup -1}.
- Research Organization:
- Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-07CH11359
- OSTI ID:
- 911835
- Report Number(s):
- FERMILAB-MASTERS-2006-05; TRN: US0800165
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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