First measurement of W Boson production in association with a single charm quark in pp collisions at s=1.96 TeV

Abstract

We present the first measurement of the production cross section of a W boson with a single charm quark (c) in pp collisions at s=1.96TeV, using soft muon tagging of c jets. In a data sample of 1.8fb-1, recorded with the Collider Detector at Fermilab II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, we select events with W+1 or 2 jets. We use the charge correlation between the W and the muon from the semileptonic decay of a charm hadron to extract the Wc signal. We measure Wc(pTc>20GeV/c,|Εc|<1.5) BR(W)=9.8±3.2pb, in agreement with theoretical expectations. © 2008 The American Physical Society.