Experimental Discrimination between Charge 2ℯ/3 Top Quark and Charge 4ℯ/3 Exotic Quark Production Scenarios

Authors

V. M. Abazov, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia
Kenneth A. Bloom, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Gregory R. Snow, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
D0 Collaboration

Date of this Version

1-26-2007

Comments

Published by American Physical Society. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 041801 (2007). http://prl.aps.org. Copyright © 2007 American Physical Society. Permission to use.

Abstract

We present the first experimental discrimination between the 2ℯ/3 and 4ℯ/3 top quark electric charge scenarios, using top quark pairs (tt̅) produced in pp̅ collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV by the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We use 370 pb^-1 of data collected by the D0 experiment and select events with at least one high transverse momentum electron or muon, high transverse energy imbalance, and four or more jets. We discriminate between b- and b̅-quark jets by using the charge and momenta of tracks within the jet cones. The data are consistent with the expected electric charge, ∣q∣ = 2ℯ/3. We exclude, at the 92% C.L., that the sample is solely due to the production of exotic quark pairs QQ̅ with ∣q∣ = 4ℯ/3. We place an upper limit on the fraction of QQ̅ pairs ρ