Observation of the production of a W boson in association with a single charm quark

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Feb 15;110(7):071801. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.071801. Epub 2013 Feb 13.

Abstract

The first observation of the production of a W boson with a single charm quark (c) jet in pp[over ¯] collisions at √s=1.96 TeV is reported. The analysis uses data corresponding to 4.3 fb(-1), recorded with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. Charm quark candidates are selected through the identification of an electron or muon from charm-hadron semileptonic decay within a hadronic jet, and a Wc signal is observed with a significance of 5.7 standard deviations. The production cross section σ(Wc)(p(Tc)>20 GeV/c,|η(c)|<1.5)×B(W→ℓν) is measured to be 13.6(-3.1)(+3.4) pb and is in agreement with theoretical expectations. From this result the magnitude of the quark-mixing matrix element V(cs) is derived, |V(cs)|=1.08±0.16 along with a lower limit of |V(cs)|>0.71 at the 95% confidence level, assuming that the Wc production through c to s quark coupling is dominant.