Measurement of the Top Quark Mass in the Dilepton Final State Using the Matrix Element Method

The top quark, discovered in 1995 at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, is the heaviest known elementary particle. The precise knowledge of its mass yields important constraints on the mass of the as-yet-undiscovered Higgs boson and allows one to probe for physics beyond the Standard Model. With an excellent adaptation of a novel measurement technique, described and applied here for the first time, the sensitivity to the top quark mass in the dilepton final state at the D0 experiment could be improved by more than 30%. Moreover, an extension to the method is presented which allows future measurements to significantly reduce the main limiting systematic uncertainty.

Résumé
The main pacemakers of scienti?c research are curiosity, ingenuity, and a pinch of persistence. Equipped with these characteristics a young researcher will be s- cessful in pushing scienti?c discoveries. And there is still a lot to discover and to understand. In the course of understanding the origin and structure of matter it is now known that all matter is made up of six types of quarks. Each of these carry a different mass. But neither are the particular mass values understood nor is it known why elementary particles carry mass at all. One could perhaps accept some small generic mass value for every quark, but nature has decided differently. Two quarks are extremely light, three more have a somewhat typical mass value, but one quark is extremely massive. It is the top quark, the heaviest quark and even the heaviest elementary particle that we know, carrying a mass as large as the mass of three iron nuclei. Even though there exists no explanation of why different particle types carry certain masses, the internal consistency of the currently best theorythe standard model of particle physicsyields a relation between the masses of the top quark, the so-called W boson, and the yet unobserved Higgs particle. Therefore, when one assumes validity of the model, it is even possible to take precise measurements of the top quark mass to predict the mass of the Higgs (and potentially other yet unobserved) particles.

Contenu

Experimental Environment.- Event Reconstruction and Simulation.- The Top Quark and the Concept of Mass.- The Matrix Element Method.- Measurement of the Top Quark Mass.- Improved Mass Measurement.- Conclusion.