Jet substructures of boosted polarized top quarks

Abstract

We study jet substructures of a boosted polarized top quark, which undergoes the semileptonic decay $t\ensuremath{\rightarrow}b\ensuremath{\ell}\ensuremath{\nu}$, in the perturbative QCD framework. The jet mass distribution (energy profile) is factorized into the convolution of a hard top-quark decay kernel with the bottom-quark jet function (jet energy function). Computing the hard kernel to the leading order in QCD and inputting the latter functions from the resummation formalism, we observe that the jet mass distribution is not sensitive to the helicity of the top quark, but the energy profile is: energy is accumulated faster within a left-hand top jet than within a right-hand one, a feature related to the $V\ensuremath{-}A$ structure of weak interaction. It is pointed out that the energy profile is a simple and useful jet observable for helicity discrimination of a boosted top quark, which helps identification of physics beyond the standard model at the Large Hadron Collider. The extension of our analysis to other jet substructures, including those associated with a hadronically decaying polarized top quark, is proposed.