Measurement of the $t \bar{t}$ production cross section in $p \bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 = TeV using kinematic characteristics of lepton + jets events

We present a measurement of the top quark pair $t\bar{t}$ production cross section in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV using 230 pb$^{-1}$ of data collected by the DO detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We select events with one charged lepton (electron or muon), large missing transverse energy, and at least four jets, and extract the $t\bar{t}$ content of the sample based on the kinematic characteristics of the events. For a top quark mass of 175 GeV, we measure $\sigma_{ttbar}$ = 6.7 $^{+1.4}_{-1.3}$ (stat) $^{+1.6}_{- 1.1}$ (syst) $\pm$0.4 (lumi) pb, in good agreement with the standard model prediction