Measurement of the tt̄ production cross section in pp̄ collisions at √s=1.8 TeV

We update the measurement of the tt production cross section using the CDF detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. This measurement uses tt decays to the final states e+v+jets and μ+v+jets. We search for b quarks from t decays via secondary-vertex identification or the identification of semileptonic decays of the b and cascade c quarks. The background to the tt production is determined primarily through a Monte Carlo simulation. However, we calibrate the simulation and evaluate its uncertainty using several independent data samples. For a top quark mass of 175 GeV/c 2 , we measure σ tt = 5.1±1.5 pb and (σ tt =9.2±4.3 pb using the secondary vertex and the lepton tagging algorithms, respectively. Finally, we combine these results with those from other tt decay channels and obtain (σ tt =6.5 -1.4 +1.7 pb.