PhD thesis,
Extraction of the top quark mass from the total top quark pair production cross section in the single lepton channel
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, (2012)
Abstract
A measurement of the total
t
̄
t
production cross section in the single lepton channel
is presented. The cross section is extracted in a profile likelihood fit of templates
constructed from a likelihood classifier using four kinematic variables. For a top
quark of mass
m
t
= 172
.
5 GeV, the measured cross section is 178
.
9
±
12 pb. The
measurement agrees within one-standard deviation with the latest theoretical pre-
dictions. The cross section measurement is repeated for seven other values of the
top quark mass ranging from 140 GeV to 200 GeV to obtain the mass dependence
of the experimental cross section. By comparing this with the mass dependence of
different higher-order predictions, the top quark mass is extracted. This method al-
lows the determination of two different theoretical mass parameters: the top quark
mass in the on-shell scheme
m
pole
t
and in the
MS
scheme
m
t
(
m
t
). The most precise
measurement obtained is
m
pole
t
= 171
.
2
±
4
.
5 GeV, obtained when employing the
most precise higher-order calculations in the
MS
scheme. This value agrees within
one-standard deviation with the latest Tevatron average of the best top quark mass
measurements.
