Measurement of the Single-Top-Quark Production Cross Section at CDF

We report a measurement of the single-top-quark production cross section in 2.2  fb-1 of pp̅ collision data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab at sqrt[s]=1.96  TeV. Candidate events are classified as signal-like by three parallel analyses which use likelihood, matrix element, and neural network discriminants. These results are combined in order to improve the sensitivity. We observe a signal consistent with the standard model prediction, but inconsistent with the background-only model by 3.7 standard deviations with a median expected sensitivity of 4.9 standard deviations. We measure a cross section of 2.2-0.6+0.7(stat+syst)  pb, extract the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix-element value |Vtb|=0.88-0.12+0.13(stat+syst) ± 0.07(theory), and set the limit |Vtb|>0.66 at the 95% C.L.

Duke Scholars

Author Alfred T. Goshaw Physics

Author Ashutosh V. Kotwal Physics

Author Mark C. Kruse Physics

Author Seog Oh Physics