Investigation of background subtraction techniques for high mass dilepton physics

The signals in high mass dilepton spectroscopy with nucleus–nucleus collisions at collider energies are superimposed on a generally large combinatorial background. Because this background contains a significant correlated like-sign component originating from B meson decays, the “like-sign” method to determine the background is inappropriate. We discuss strategies to deal with the correlations in the background. By taking advantage of the B meson oscillation mechanism and of the particular features of B meson decays a new method to measure the bb̄ production cross-section is proposed.