Abstract

The differential cross-section for pair production of top quarks with high transverse momentum is measured in 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The measurement is performed for $t\bar{t}$ events in the lepton+jets channel. The cross-section is reported as a function of the hadronically decaying top quark transverse momentum for values above 300 GeV. The hadronically decaying top quark is reconstructed as an anti-$k_t$ jet with radius parameter $R=1.0$ and identified with jet substructure techniques. The observed yield is corrected for detector effects to obtain a cross-section at particle level in a fiducial region close to the event selection. A parton-level cross-section extrapolated to the full phase space is also reported for top quarks with transverse momentum above 300 GeV. The predictions of a majority of next-to-leading-order and leading-order matrix-element Monte Carlo generators are found to agree with the measured cross-sections.

Highlights

  • The large number of top–antitop quark pairs produced at the LHC provide a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of tt production and test the Standard Model (SM) at the TeV scale

  • Charged-particle trajectories are reconstructed by the inner detector, which covers pseudorapidity jηj < 2.5 and is composed of a silicon pixel detector, a silicon microstrip detector, and a transition radiation tracker (TRT)

  • The uncertainties due to QCD initial- and final-state radiation (ISR and FSR) modeling are estimated with samples generated with AcerMC v3.8[43], interfaced to Pythia for which the parton shower parameters are varied according to a measurement of the additional jet activity in tt events [44]

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The large number of top–antitop quark (tt) pairs produced at the LHC provide a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of tt production and test the Standard Model (SM) at the TeV scale. The selection and reconstruction are based on an algorithm developed [17] and used in tt resonance searches [18,19,20,21] that increases the tt selection efficiency at high top quark pT and extends the kinematic reach into the TeV range This analysis utilizes the lepton þ jets channel where one W boson decays hadronically and the other leptonically to an electron or a muon, assuming each top quark decays to a W boson and a b-quark. The object definition, event selection, and background determination used in this analysis follow closely the ones used in the search for tt resonances [20] More details of these aspects of the measurement can be found in the corresponding reference

THE ATLAS DETECTOR
DATA AND MONTE CARLO SAMPLES
OBJECT DEFINITION AND EVENT SELECTION
BACKGROUND
Detector modeling
Signal and background modeling
DATA AND MC COMPARISON AT DETECTOR LEVEL
VIII. DIFFERENTIAL CROSS-SECTION DETERMINATION
Combination of decay channels
Particle- and parton-levels fiducial region definitions
Unfolding to particle and parton levels
Propagation of statistical and systematic uncertainties
RESULTS AND INTERPRETATION

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