Measurement of the W boson helicity in events with a single reconstructed top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=8 TeV

The CMS collaboration Khachatryan, Vardan ; Sirunyan, Albert M ; Tumasyan, Armen ; et al.
JHEP 01 (2015) 053, 2015.
Inspire Record 1320561 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.66567

A measurement of the W boson helicity is presented, where the W boson originates from the decay of a top quark produced in pp collisions. The event selection, optimized for reconstructing a single top quark in the final state, requires exactly one isolated lepton (muon or electron) and exactly two jets, one of which is likely to originate from the hadronization of a bottom quark. The analysis is performed using data recorded at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC in 2012. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 inverse femtobarns. The measured helicity fractions are F[L] = 0.298 +/- 0.028 (stat) +\- 0.032 (syst), F[0] = 0.720 +/- 0.039 (stat) +/- 0.037 (syst), and F[R] = -0.018 +/- 0.019 (stat) +/- 0.011 (syst). These results are used to set limits on the real part of the tWb anomalous couplings, gL and gR.

3 data tables

Measurement of the W helicity fractions using the cos(theta*l) distribution in the muon channel. The helicity fractions corresponding to the longitudinal (F0) and left-handed (FL) polarizations are extracted from the fit while FR is obtained from the constraint of FL+FR+F0 = 1. The statistical correlation between the fit parameters is about -0.90.

Measurement of the W helicity fractions using the cos(theta*l) distribution in the electron channel. The helicity fractions corresponding to the longitudinal (F0) and left-handed (FL) polarizations are extracted from the fit while FR is obtained from the constraint of FL+FR+F0 = 1. The statistical correlation between the fit parameters is about -0.90.

Measurement of the W helicity fractions using the cos(theta*l) distribution in both electron and muon channels. The helicity fractions corresponding to the longitudinal (F0) and left-handed (FL) polarizations are extracted from the combined fit while FR is obtained from the constraint of FL+FR+F0 = 1. The total correlation between the fit parameters is about -0.80.