The b jet production cross section is measured for events with a W boson in ppbar collisions at 1.96
TeV. The data were collected using the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment during Run
II of the Fermilab Tevatron collider. W + b jet events are selected by requiring a high pT central
electron or muon, large MET and one or two high ET central jets; vertex information are used from
the jets to select the subset that are consistent with originating from b quark production. For this
analysis a new operating point for the widely used CDF vertex tagger was implemented that has
significantly increased b purity over standard methods. Assuming standard model cross sections for
top and diboson processes, the b jet production cross section for events with a leptonically decaying
W boson is measured to be 2.74 +- 0.27 (stat) +- 0.42(syst) pb. The measurement is compared
to several available theoretical predictions. This measured cross section provides a data-driven
measurement of a difficult-to-predict background for single top and Higgs searches.
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