Effects of heavy Higgs bosons in the hadronic production of top-quark pairs including QCD corrections

Abstract

In this dissertation a possible extension of the standard model of particle physics (SM) in the Higgs sector is investigated using top-quark pair production at the Large Hadron Collider as a probe. In particular, the so-called two-Higgs-doublet model (2HDM) is studied. The 2HDM introduces several spin-0 bosons (which are also called Higgs bosons) in addition to the SM Higgs boson. In this thesis these additional Higgs bosons are assumed to be heavy enough to decay into a top-antitop quark pair. Thus, the experimental signatures of these new particles can be studied through observables of top-quark pair production. To this end the resonant production of heavy neutral Higgs bosons and their decay into top-quark pairs in calculated up to next-to-leading order corrections in the QCD coupling constant retaining the full spin information of the top-antitop pair. This allows to analyse spin dependent observables which can be more sensitive to effects of heavy Higgs bosons than spin independent ones especially in the case of top-antitop spin correlations. The additional application of kinematical cuts on the phase space of top and antitop quarks can enhance the sensitivity further. In this thesis a method is presented that can be used to construct the spin correlation which is most sensitive to the effects of heavy Higgs bosons on top-quark pair production. Furthermore, it is shown that the next-to-leading order corrections are required to construct observables which entail robust predictions. The results for the next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling constant presented in this thesis were the first ones given for resonant heavy Higgs production and decay into top-quark pairs.