Measurement of the top pair production cross section in 8 TeV proton-proton collisions using kinematic information in the lepton plus jets final state with ATLAS

Abstract

A measurement is presented of the (tt) over bar inclusive production cross section in pp collisions at a center-ofmass energy of pffisffiffi root s = 8 TeV using data collected by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The measurement was performed in the lepton + jets final state using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb(-1). The cross section was obtained using a likelihood discriminant fit and b-jet identification was used to improve the signal-to-background ratio. The inclusive (tt) over bar production cross section was measured to be 260 +/- 1(stat)(-23)(+22)(stat) +/- 8(lumi) +/- 4(beam) pb assuming a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV, in good agreement with the theoretical prediction of 253(-15)(+13) pb. The (tt) over bar -> (e, mu) + jets production cross section in the fiducial region determined by the detector acceptance is also reported.