Measurement of the $WW+WZ$ production cross section in a semileptonic decay mode at CDF

Thesis/Dissertation · Mon Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/975160· OSTI ID:975160

Hurwitz, Martina ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)

The measurement of the WW + WZ production cross section in a semileptonic decay mode is presented. The measurement is carried out with 4.6 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity collected by the CDF II detector in √s = 1.96 TeV proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron. The main experimental challenge is identifying the signal in the overwhelming background from W+jets production. The modeling of the W+jets background is carefully studied and a matrix element technique is used to build a discriminant to separate signal and background. The cross section of WW + WZ production is measured to be σ(p$$\bar{p}$$ → WW + WZ) = 16.5_-3.0^+3.3 pb, in agreement with the next-to-leading order theoretical prediction of 15.1 ± 0.9 pb. The significance of the signal is evaluated to be 5.4σ. This measurement is an important milestone in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson at the Tevatron.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 975160
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-THESIS--2010-07
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CROSS SECTIONS
Experiment-HEP
FERMILAB COLLIDER DETECTOR
FERMILAB TEVATRON
FORECASTING
HIGGS BOSONS
LUMINOSITY
MATRIX ELEMENTS
PRODUCTION
SEMILEPTONIC DECAY
SIMULATION
STANDARD MODEL