Measurement of inclusive and differential cross sections for single top quark production in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 13 TeV
Measurements of the inclusive and normalised differential cross sections are presented for the production of single top quarks in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data used were marc:recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC during 2016–2018, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{−1}$. Events containing one electron and one muon in the final state are analysed. For the inclusive measurement, a multivariate discriminant, exploiting the kinematic properties of the events is used to separate the signal from the dominant $ \textrm{t}\overline{\textrm{t}} $ background. A cross section of $ 79.2\pm 0.9{\left(\textrm{stat}\right)}_{-8.0}^{+7.7}\left(\textrm{syst}\right)\pm 1.2\left(\textrm{lumi}\right) $ pb is obtained, consistent with the predictions of the standard model. For the differential measurements, a fiducial region is defined according to the detector acceptance, and the requirement of exactly one jet coming from the fragmentation of a bottom quark. The resulting distributions are unfolded to particle level and agree with the predictions at next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.[graphic not available: see fulltext]
Benecke, A., Bruno, G., Bury, F., Caputo, C., David, P., Delaere, C., Donertas, I. S., Giammanco, A., Jaffel, K., Jain, S., Lemaitre, V., Mondal, K., Taliercio, A., Tran, T. T., Vischia, P., Wertz, S., CMS, Bethani, A., & et al. (2023). Measurement of inclusive and differential cross sections for single top quark production in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 13 TeV. Journal of High Energy Physics, 07. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2023)046 (Original work published 2023)