Measurement of the tt production cross section in pp collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV using kinematic characteristics of lepton + jets events

We present a measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in pp collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV utilizing 425 pb -1 of data collected with the DO detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We consider the final state of the top quark pair containing one high-p T electron or muon and at least four jets. We exploit specific kinematic features of tt events to extract the cross section. For a top quark mass of 175 GeV, we measure σ tt = 6.4 +1.3 -1.2 (stat) ± 0.7(syst) ± 0.4(lum) pb, in good agreement with the standard model prediction.