First Measurement of the Top-quark Pair Production Cross Section in Proton-proton Collisions at the Center of Mass Energy of 7 TeV

Book excerpt: The first measurement of the cross section for top-quark pair production in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV has been performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3 pb-1 recorded by the CMS detector. This result utilizes the final state with two isolated, highly energetic charged leptons, large missing transverse energy, and two or more jets. Backgrounds from Drell-Yan and non-W/Z boson production are estimated from data. Eleven events are observed in the data with 2.1+/-1.0 events expected from background. The measured cross section is 194+/-72 (statistical) +/-24 (systematic) +/-21 (luminosity) pb. The result is consistent with next-to-leading order theoretical predictions.