Study of heavy-flavor quarks produced in association with top-quark pairs at √s = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector

Abstract

Using a sample of dilepton top-quark pair (t[bar over t]) candidate events, a study is performed of the production of top-quark pairs together with heavy-flavor (HF) quarks, the sum of t[bar over t] + b + X and t[bar over t] + c + X, collectively referred to as t[bar over t] + HF. The data set used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.7 fb[superscript −1] of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The presence of additional HF (b or c) quarks in the t[bar over t] sample is inferred by looking for events with at least three b-tagged jets, where two are attributed to the b quarks from the t[bar over t] decays and the third to additional HF production. The dominant background to t[bar over t] + HF in this sample is t[bar over t] + jet events in which a light-flavor jet is misidentified as a heavy-flavor jet. To determine the heavy- and light-flavor content of the additional b-tagged jets, a fit to the vertex mass distribution of b-tagged jets in the sample is performed. The result of the fit shows that 79 ± 14 (stat) ± 22 (syst) of the 105 selected extra b-tagged jets originate from HF quarks, 3 standard deviations away from the hypothesis of zero t[bar over t] + HF production. The result for extra HF production is quoted as a ratio (R[subscript HF]) of the cross section for t[bar over t] + HF production to the cross section for t[bar over t] production with at least one additional jet. Both cross sections are measured in a fiducial kinematic region within the ATLAS acceptance. R[subscript HF] is measured to be [6.2 ± 1.1(stat) ± 1.8(syst)]% for jets with p[subscript T] > 25 GeV and |η| < 2.5, in agreement with the expectations from Monte Carlo generators.