Dissertation presented to the University of Pennsylvania, May 1996

by Gareth M. Houk

advisor: Dr. Hugh H. Williams


Title
=====
"Identification of top quark production 
 using kinematic and b-tagging techniques
 in the lepton + jets channel 
 in proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV"


Abstract
========
	We identify top quark production in 
p-pbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV.
We select events with a high energy lepton, 
evidence of a neutrino, and significant jet activity.
Within this sample, t-tbar events are isolated 
first by identifying jets arising from b-quark production 
via the long lifetime of their decay products
and second by selecting events which are kinematically
inconsistent with background expectations.
We demonstrate a technique for combining these two 
approaches in order to isolate a significant
t-tbar signal and observe 11 events
compared to a predicted background of 1.5+-0.4 events.
This observed signal excess of 4.5 sigma is
more significant than the observed excess using either 
the b-tagging or kinematic technique alone.



Posted to /cdf/pub/thesis/cdf4633_houk_thesis.ps
    http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/thesis/cdf4633_houk_thesis.ps

Posted by groer@fnald