TOP-QUARK SEARCH IN MULTIJET SIGNALS

We investigate the possibilities of finding the top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron ppBAR collider (square-root s = 1.8 TeV) in the lepton plus multijet signal. The theoretical uncertainties in the normalization of the top-quark production cross section and background signals make it important to look for the top quark in a final state where the top-quark mass is reconstructible from the final state. The W + 4 jet final state offers a simple and direct way to reconstruct the top-quark mass through final-state invariant masses. It is shown that from a theoretical viewpoint the top quark is easily recovered from this W + 4 jet cross section. The only limitation comes from the experimental ability to correctly reconstruct the invariant masses which might contain multiple jets.