Measurement of the \u3ci\u3ett̅\u3c/i\u3e production cross section in \u3ci\u3epp̅\u3c/i\u3e collisions at √\u3ci\u3es\u3c/i\u3e = 1.96 TeV using kinematic characteristics of lepton + jets events

We present a measurement of the top quark pair production cross section in pp̅ collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV utilizing 425 pb-1 of data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We consider the final state of the top quark pair containing one high-pT electron or muon and at least four jets. We exploit specific kinematic features of tt̅ events to extract the cross section. For a top quark mass of 175 GeV, we measure σ tt̅ = 6.4-1.2+1.3(stat) ± 0.7(syst) ± 0.4(lum) pb, in good agreement with the standard model prediction