Measurement of the differential tt production cross section as a function of the jet mass and extraction of the top quark mass in hadronic decays of boosted top quarks

Abstract

A measurement of the jet mass distribution in hadronic decays of Lorentz-boosted top quarks is presented. The measurement is performed in the lepton + jets channel of top quark pair production (tt) events, where the lepton is an electron or muon. The products of the hadronic top quark decay are reconstructed using a single large-radius jet with transverse momentum greater than 400 GeV. The data were collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in proton- proton collisions and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1 . The differential tt production cross section as a function of the jet mass is unfolded to the particle level and is used to extract the top quark mass. The jet mass scale is calibrated using the hadronic W boson decay within the large-radius jet. The uncertainties in the modelling of the final state radiation are reduced by studying angular corre- lations in the jet substructure. These developments lead to a significant increase in precision, and a top quark mass of 173.06 ± 0.84 GeV.