Abstract: The first observation of top quark production in proton-nucleus collisions is reported using proton-lead data collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of ?sNN=8.16??TeV. The measurement is performed using events with exactly one isolated electron or muon candidate and at least four jets. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 174??nb?1. The significance of the t¯t signal against the background-only hypothesis is above 5 standard deviations. The measured cross section is ?t¯t=45±8??nb, consistent with predictions from perturbative quantum chromodynamics.

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