Published in:
Physical Review Letters 105,23 (2010)
Link to original published article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.232003
Abstract
We present a measurement of the top-quark width in the lepton + jets decay channel of t (t) over bar events produced in p (p) over bar collisions at Fermilab's Tevatron collider and collected by the CDF II detector. From a data sample corresponding to 4.3 fb(-1) of integrated luminosity, we identify 756 candidate events. The top-quark mass and the mass of the hadronically decaying W boson that comes from the top-quark decay are reconstructed for each event and compared with templates of different top-quark widths (Gamma(t)) and deviations from nominal jet energy scale (Delta(JES)) to perform a simultaneous fit for both parameters, where Delta(JES) is used for the in situ calibration of the jet energy scale. By applying a Feldman-Cousins approach, we establish an upper limit at 95% confidence level (CL) of Gamma(t) < 7.6 GeV and a two-sided 68% CL interval of 0.3 GeV < Gamma(t) < 4.4 GeV for a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV/c(2), which are consistent with the standard model prediction.
Date of this Version
December 2010