Abstract
We present a measurement of the cross section for Z boson production times the branching fraction to tau lepton pairs sigma(p (p) over bar -} Z X)Br(Z -} tau( )tau(-)) in p (p) over bar collisions at root s = 1.96 TeV. The measurement is performed in the channel in which one tau lepton decays into a muon and neutrinos. and the other tau lepton decays hadronically or into an electron and neutrinos.
The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.0 fb(-1) collected with the DO detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. The sample contains 1511 candidate events with an estimated 20% background from jets or muons misidentified as tau leptons.
We obtain sigma. Br = 240 /- 8 (star) /- 12 (sys) /- 15 (lum) pb, which is consistent with the standard model prediction.