We present a measurement of the top anti-top quark (ttbar)production cross section in the dilepton final states from proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy at 7 TeV at the LHC. A b-tagging algorithm based on tracks displaced from the event interaction vertex is applied to identify bottom quark jets from top quark decay and reject background events. Given the relatively pure sample of bottom quark jets in ttbar dilepton final states, a new technique to measure in-situ the b-tagging efficiency is introduced that uses the distribution of the number of observed b-tagged jets. We present results with data collected at the ATLAS detector in 2010 with an integrated luminosity of 35 pb-1. The measured ttbar cross section is 176 +22/-21 (stat.) ± 20 (syst.) ± 6 (lum.) pb in the dilepton channel. We will also discuss the future prospects of this measurement.

We present a measurement of the top anti-top quark (tt ̄ ) production cross section in the dilepton final states from proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy at 7 TeV at the LHC. A b-tagging algorithm based on tracks displaced from the event interaction vertex is applied to identify bottom quark jets from top quark decay and reject background events. Given the relatively pure sample of bottom quark jets in tt ̄ dilepton final states, a new technique to measure in-situ the b-tagging efficiency is introduced that uses the distribution of the number of observed b-tagged jets. We present results with data collected at the ATLAS detector in 2010 with an integrated luminosity of 35 pb -1. The measured tt ̄ cross section is 176+22-21stat. +20-20 (syst.) +/- 6 (lum.) pb in the dilepton channel. We will also discuss the future prospects of this measurement.

A measurement of the top-quark pair-production cross section in p{bar p} collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.12 fb−1 collected with the Collider Detector at Fermilab is presented. Decays of top-quark pairs into the final states e[nu] + jets and [mu][nu] + jets are selected, and the cross section and the b-jet identification efficiency are determined using a new measurement technique which requires that the measured cross sections with exactly one and multiple identified b-quarks from the top-quark decays agree. Assuming a top-quark mass of 175 GeV/c2, a cross section of 8.5 ± 0.6(stat.) ± 0.7(syst.) pb is measured.

This PhD thesis focuses on the search for flavor-changing neutral currents in the decay of a top quark to an up-type quark (q = u, c) and the Standard Model Higgs boson, where the Higgs boson decays to bb. Further, the thesis presents the combination of this search for top quark pair events with other ATLAS searches – in the course of which the most restrictive bounds to date on tqH interactions were obtained. Following on from the discovery of the Higgs boson, it is particularly important to measure the Yukawa couplings of the Standard Model fermions; these parameters may provide crucial insights to help solve the flavor puzzle and may help reveal the presence of new physics before it is directly observed in experiments.