Improved determination of the sample composition of dimuon events produced in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV

• Published in: The European physical journal. C, Particles and fields Particles and fields, 2011-08, Vol.71 (8), p.1-14, Article 1720
• Main Authors: Aaltonen, T, AlvarezGonzalez, B, Amerio, S, Amidei, D, Anastassov, A, Annovi, A, Antos, J, Apollinari, G, Apresyan, A, Arisawa, T, Artikov, A, Asaadi, J, Ashmanskas, W, Auerbach, B, Aurisano, A, Azfar, F, Badgett, W, Barbaro-Galtieri, A, Barnes, V E, Barnett, BA, Barria, P, Bartos, P, Bauce, M, Bedeschi, F, Beecher, D, Behari, S, Bellettini, G, Bellinger, J, Benjamin, D, Beretvas, A, Bhatti, A, Binkley, M, Bisello, D, Bizjak, I, Bland, K R, Blumenfeld, B, Bocci, A, Bodek, A, Bortoletto, D, Boudreau, J, Boveia, A, Brau, B, Brigliadori, L, Brisuda, A, Bromberg, C, Brucken, E, Bucciantonio, M, Budagov, J, Budd, H S, Budd, S, et. al
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Collisions; Detectors; Estimates; Flavor (particle physics); Kaons; Muons; PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS; Pions
• ISSN: 1434-6044; 1434-6052
• DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1720-4

We use a new method to estimate with 5% accuracy the contribution of pion and kaon in-flight-decays to the dimuon data set acquired with the CDF detector. Based on this improved estimate, we show that the total number and the properties of the collected dimuon events are not yet accounted for by ordinary sources of dimuons which also include the contributions, as measured in the data, of heavy flavor, Upsilon , and Drell-Yan production in addition to muons mimicked by hadronic punchthrough. The number of unaccounted events corresponds to (12.8 plus or minus 3.2)% of the $b\bar{b}$ production. We find that (23 plus or minus 6)% of the unaccounted events contain additional muon candidates. For comparison, this fraction is (6.9 plus or minus 0.4)% for events due to $b\bar{b}$ production.