Single-Lepton Top Signals with a b-Tag at the Tevatron

Abstract

Events with a leptonic W-decay plus jets should contain top-quark signals, but a QCD W+jets background must be separated. We compare transverse W-momentum, jet multiplicity, and b-tagging separation criteria, and find that the main background after tagging comes from mistagging. We illustrate how to extract the mass m_t via event reconstructions and how to confirm signal purity by lepton angular distributions.

8 pages, Revtex file. 3 postscript figures submitted to hep-ph via "figures" command, also available via fax or regular mail upon request. Preprint no. MAD/PH/807