Single Lepton Production at Large Transverse Momentum

Abstract We study the production of single isolated leptons at large transverse momentum, p T l > 1 2 M w . The dominant source of such leptons is production of an on-shell W boson recoiling against a hard jet. Vetoing this jet forces the W boson to be produced off resonance and significantly reduces the standard model cross section, thereby enhancing the discovery prospects for non standard model physics. A significant number of events have the topologically interesting signature of a large p T lepton balancing a jet with little measured missing transverse energy.