Ph.D. Thesis by William Joseph Ashmanskas

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Filed: May 18, 1998
Degree awarded: May 22, 1998

Title 
----- 
A Direct Measurement of the W Boson Decay Width in
Proton-Antiproton Collisions at 1.8 TeV

Advisor: Prof. Marjorie D. Shapiro

Abstract
--------

We present a direct measurement of the W boson total decay width,
Gamma_W, using 90 pb-1 of high-Pt electron data collected by the
Collider Detector at Fermilab during the 1994-1995 run of the Fermilab
Tevatron p-pbar collider.  We normalize predicted signal and
background transverse mass (Mt) distributions to 49843 W --> e nu
candidates in the region Mt < 200 GeV and fit the high-Mt region to
extract Gamma_W.  By fitting the 456 events in the region 100 GeV <=
Mt < 200 GeV, we find GammaW = 2.25 +0.13-0.12(stat) +-0.11(syst) GeV.



Posted to /cdf/pub/thesis/cdf4719_ashmanskas_thesis.ps
    http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/thesis/cdf4719_ashmanskas_thesis.ps

Posted by ashmansk@cdfsga