Measurement of the t (bar t) cross section at the Run II Tevatron using Support Vector Machines

This dissertation measures the t(bar t) production cross section at the Run II CDF detector using data from early 2001 through March 2007. The Tevatron at Fermilab is a p(bar p) collider with center of mass energy √s = 1.96 TeV. This data composes a sample with a time-integrated luminosity measured at 2.2 ± 0.1 fb-1. A system of learning machines is developed to recognize t(bar t) events in the 'lepton plus jets' decay channel. Support Vector Machines are described, and their ability to cope with a multi-class discrimination problem is provided. The t(bar t) production cross section is then measured in this framework, and found to be σt#bar t# = 7.14 ± 0.25 (stat)-0.86+0.61(sys) pb.