Measurement of W Boson Polarization in Top Quark Decay

Abstract

A measurement of the polarization of the W boson from top quark decay is an excellent test of the V-A form of the charged-current weak interaction in the standard model. Since the longitudinal W boson is intimately related to the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism, and the standard model gives a specific prediction for the fraction of longitudinal W bosons from top decays, it is of particular interest for study. This thesis presents a measurement of W boson polarization in top quark decays through an analysis of the cosθ* distribution in the lepton-plus-jets channel of t$\bar{t}$ candidate events from p$\bar{p}$ collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV. This measurement uses an integrated luminosity of ~ 162 pb-1 of data collected with the CDF Run II detector, resulting in 31 t$\bar{t}$ candidate events with at least one identified b jet. Using a binned likelihood fit to the cosθ* distribution from the t$\bar{t}$ candidate events found in this sample, the fraction of W bosons with longitudinal polarization is determined to be F0 = 0.99$+0.29\atop{-0.35}$stat.) ± 0.19(syst.), F0 > 0.33 @ 95% CL. This result is consistent with the standard model prediction, given a top quark mass of 174.3 GeV/c2, of F0 = 0.701 ± 0.012.

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