Measurements of the Top Quark Pair Production Cross Section and an Estimate of the DØ Silicon Detector Lifetime

Sammanfattning: This thesis presents two measurements of the top quark pair production cross section at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV using data from the DØ experiment. Both measurements are performed in the dilepton final state and make use of secondary vertex b-tagging. With 158 pb-1 of data in the electron-muon final state, the measured cross section is:?(top-antitop) = 11.1 +5.8 -4.3 (stat) +- 1.4 (syst) +- 0.7 (lumi) pb.With 425 pb-1 of data in the electron+track and muon+track final states, the measured cross section is:sigma(top-antitop) = 6.3 +2.1 -1.8 (stat) +- 1.1 (syst) +- 0.4 (lumi) pb.Both measurements are in agreement with the prediction from perturbative QCD calculations. In addition, an estimate of the DØ silicon detector lifetime is presented. The radiation damage is determined by studying the depletion voltage of the silicon sensors as a function of time. Based on this data the silicon detector is estimated to remain operational up to delivered luminosities of 6-8 fb-1.