The normalized differential cross section for top quark pair (tt-bar) production is measured in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV at the CERN LHC using the CMS detector in data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 inverse femtobarns. The measurements are performed in the lepton + jets (e/mu + jets) and in the dilepton (e+e-, mu+mu-, and e+-mu-+) decay channels. The tt-bar cross section is measured as a function of the kinematic properties of the charged leptons, the jets associated to b quarks, the top quarks, and the tt-bar system. The data are compared with several predictions from perturbative quantum chromodynamics up to approximate next-to-next-to-leading-order precision. No significant deviations are observed relative to the standard model predictions.

The charge asymmetry in t t-bar events is measured using dilepton final states produced in pp collisions at the LHC at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. The data sample, collected with the CMS detector, corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 inverse femtobarns. The measurements are performed using events with two oppositely charged leptons (electrons or muons) and two or more jets, where at least one of the jets is identified as originating from a bottom quark. The charge asymmetry is measured from differences in kinematic distributions, unfolded to the parton level, of positively and negatively charged top quarks and leptons. The t t-bar and leptonic charge asymmetries are found to be 0.011 +/- 0.011 (stat) +/- 0.007 (syst) and 0.003 +/- 0.006 (stat) +/- 0.003 (syst), respectively. These results, as well as charge asymmetry measurements made as a function of the invariant mass, rapidity, and transverse momentum of the t t-bar system, are in agreement with predictions of the standard model.

Measurements of the top quark-antiquark (t t-bar) spin correlations and the top quark polarization are presented for t t-bar pairs produced in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.5 inverse femtobarns collected with the CMS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using events with two oppositely charged leptons (electrons or muons) and two or more jets, where at least one of the jets is identified as originating from a bottom quark. The spin correlations and polarization are measured from the angular distributions of the two selected leptons, both inclusively and differentially, with respect to the invariant mass, rapidity, and transverse momentum of the t t-bar system. The measurements are unfolded to the parton level and found to be in agreement with predictions of the standard model. A search for new physics in the form of anomalous top quark chromo moments is performed. No evidence of new physics is observed, and exclusion limits on the real part of the chromo-magnetic dipole moment and the imaginary part of the chromo-electric dipole moment are evaluated.

Jet multiplicity distributions in top quark pair (t t-bar) events are measured in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 inverse femtobarns. The measurement is performed in the dilepton decay channels (e+ e-, mu+ mu-, and e+/- mu-/+). The absolute and normalized differential cross sections for t t-bar production are measured as a function of the jet multiplicity in the event for different jet transverse momentum thresholds and the kinematic properties of the leading additional jets. The differential t t-bar b and t t-bar b b-bar cross sections are presented for the first time as a function of the kinematic properties of the leading additional b jets. Furthermore, the fraction of events without additional jets above a threshold is measured as a function of the transverse momenta of the leading additional jets and the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of all additional jets. The data are compared and found to be consistent with predictions from several perturbative quantum chromodynamics event generators and a next-to-leading order calculation.

Measurements are reported of the normalized differential cross sections for top quark pair production with respect to four kinematic event variables: the missing transverse energy; the scalar sum of the jet transverse momentum (pT); the scalar sum of the pT of all objects in the event; and the pT of leptonically decaying W bosons from top quark decays. The data sample, collected using the CMS detector at the LHC, consists of 5.0 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and 19.7 inverse femtobarns at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. Top quark pair events containing one electron or muon are selected. The results are presented after correcting for detector effects to allow direct comparison with theoretical predictions. No significant deviations from the predictions of several standard model event simulation generators are observed.

The cross section for pair production of top quarks (t-tbar) with high transverse momenta is measured in pp collisions, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC with sqrt(s) = 8 TeV in data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 inverse femtobarns. The measurement is performed using lepton+jets events, where one top quark decays semileptonically, while the second top quark decays to a hadronic final state. The hadronic decay is reconstructed as a single, large-radius jet, and identified as a top quark candidate using jet substructure techniques. The integrated cross section and the differential cross sections as a function of top quark pt and rapidity are measured at particle level within a fiducial region related to the detector-level requirements and at parton level. The particle-level integrated cross section is found to be sigma[t-tbar] = 0.499 +/- 0.035 (stat+syst) +/- 0.095 (theory) +/- 0.013 (lumi) pb for top quark pt > 400 GeV. The parton-level measurement is sigma[t-tbar] = 1.44 +/- 0.10 (stat+syst) +/- 0.29 (theory) +/- 0.04 (lumi) pb. The integrated and differential cross section results are compared to predictions from several event generators.

The differential cross-section for pair production of top quarks with high transverse momentum is measured in 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The measurement is performed for $t\bar{t}$ events in the lepton+jets channel. The cross-section is reported as a function of the hadronically decaying top quark transverse momentum for values above 300 GeV. The hadronically decaying top quark is reconstructed as an anti-$k_t$ jet with radius parameter $R=1.0$ and identified with jet substructure techniques. The observed yield is corrected for detector effects to obtain a cross-section at particle level in a fiducial region close to the event selection. A parton-level cross-section extrapolated to the full phase space is also reported for top quarks with transverse momentum above 300 GeV. The predictions of a majority of next-to-leading-order and leading-order matrix-element Monte Carlo generators are found to agree with the measured cross-sections.

Measurements of normalized differential cross-sections of top-quark pair production are presented as a function of the top-quark, $t\bar{t}$ system and event-level kinematic observables in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV}. The observables have been chosen to emphasize the $t\bar{t}$ production process and to be sensitive to effects of initial- and final-state radiation, to the different parton distribution functions, and to non-resonant processes and higher-order corrections. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb$^{-1}$, recorded in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in the lepton+jets channel, requiring exactly one charged lepton and at least four jets with at least two of the jets tagged as originating from a $b$-quark. The measured spectra are corrected for detector effects and are compared to several Monte Carlo simulations. The results are in fair agreement with the predictions over a wide kinematic range. Nevertheless, most generators predict a harder top-quark transverse momentum distribution at high values than what is observed in the data. Predictions beyond NLO accuracy improve the agreement with data at high top-quark transverse momenta. Using the current settings and parton distribution functions, the rapidity distributions are not well modelled by any generator under consideration. However, the level of agreement is improved when more recent sets of parton distribution functions are used.

The distribution and orientation of energy inside jets is predicted to be an experimental handle on colour connections between the hard--scatter quarks and gluons initiating the jets. This Letter presents a measurement of the distribution of one such variable, the jet pull angle. The pull angle is measured for jets produced in $t\bar{t}$ events with one $W$ boson decaying leptonically and the other decaying to jets using 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of data recorded with the ATLAS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV at the LHC. The jet pull angle distribution is corrected for detector resolution and acceptance effects and is compared to various models.

This paper presents single lepton and dilepton kinematic distributions measured in dileptonic $t\bar{t}$ events produced in 20.2 fb$^{-1}$ of $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV $pp$ collisions recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Both absolute and normalised differential cross-sections are measured, using events with an opposite-charge $e\mu$ pair and one or two $b$-tagged jets. The cross-sections are measured in a fiducial region corresponding to the detector acceptance for leptons, and are compared to the predictions from a variety of Monte Carlo event generators, as well as fixed-order QCD calculations, exploring the sensitivity of the cross-sections to the gluon parton distribution function. Some of the distributions are also sensitive to the top quark pole mass; a combined fit of NLO fixed-order predictions to all the measured distributions yields a top quark mass value of $m_t^{\rm pole}=173.2\pm 0.9\pm0.8\pm1.2$ GeV, where the three uncertainties arise from data statistics, experimental systematics, and theoretical sources.