Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The top-quark pair production cross section is measured in final states with one electron or muon and one hadronically decaying tau lepton from the process ttbar to (l nu[l]) (tau nu[tau]) bbbar, where l = e, mu. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 19.6 inverse femtobarns collected with the CMS detector in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. The measured cross section sigma[ttbar] = 257 +/- 3 (stat) +/- 24 (syst) +/- 7 (lumi) pb, assuming a top-quark mass of 172.5 GeV, is consistent with the standard model prediction.