We report the first observation of single-top-quark production in the s channel through the combination of the CDF and D0 measurements of the cross section in proton-antiproton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The data correspond to total integrated luminosities of up to 9.7 fb-1 per experiment. The measured cross section is $\sigma_s = 1.29^{+0.26}_{-0.24}$ pb. The probability of observing a statistical fluctuation of the background to a cross section of the observed size or larger is $1.8 \times 10^{-10}$, corresponding to a significance of 6.3 standard deviations for the presence of an s-channel contribution to the production of single-top quarks.
The first search for single top quark production from the exchange of an $s$-channel virtual $W$ boson using events with an imbalance in the total transverse momentum, $b$-tagged jets, and no identified leptons is presented. The full data set collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 9.45 fb$^{-1}$ from Fermilab Tevatron proton-antiproton collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV, is used. Assuming the electroweak production of top quarks of mass 172.5 GeV/$c^2$ in the $s$-channel, a cross section of $1.12_{-0.57}^{+0.61}$ (stat+syst) pb, with a significance of 1.9 standard deviations, is measured. This measurement is combined with a previous result obtained from events with an imbalance in total transverse momentum, $b$-tagged jets, and exactly one identified lepton, yielding a cross section of $1.36_{-0.32}^{+0.37}$ (stat+syst) pb, with a significance of 4.2 standard deviations.
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