Systematic procedures for identifyingtquarks inp¯pcollider events with a muon and jets

Abstract

Substantial rates are predicted for events containing a muon and jets resulting from $W\to t\overline{b}$, $Z\to t\overline{t}$, and $t\overline{t}$ hadroproduction, with $t\to \mu \nu b$ decay. We investigate selective cuts to reject backgrounds from $b\overline{b}$, $c\overline{c}$, and $c\overline{s}$ production and to identify the $t$-quark events. For example, from a data sample containing 50 $W^{\pm }\to e^{\pm }\nu$ events, we expect that clean samples of approximately 4 $t\overline{b}$-(or $\overline{t}b$-) and conservatively 4 $t\overline{t}$-initiated ${\mu }^{\pm }$+jets events can be selected for a $t$-quark mass below 45 GeV. We suggest methods for distinguishing the contributions and for determining $m_t$.