Event shape criteria for single-lepton top-quark signals

Abstract
Single-lepton plus jets signals from tt¯ production at hadron colliders generally give more spherically symmetrical events than the principal backgrounds from W production. We show that sphericity and aplanarity criteria, applied to lepton plus neutrino plus four-jet final states at the Fermilab Tevatron pp¯ collider, help to discriminate; they can be used either to validate an eventual top-quark signal or simply to reduce background. An alternative circularity criterion in the transverse plane is less successful.
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