Inclusive Top Pair Production Research Articles

Probing the nonstandard top-gluon couplings through tt¯γγ production at the LHC

In this paper, we investigate the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic dipole moments of the top quark through top pair production in association with two photons at the LHC. We first present the strategy to reconstruct this process assuming a different source for background processes. Then, we focus on the existing constraints from inclusive top-pair production from the Tevatron and LHC, adding the new LHC measurement. Afterwards, we introduce the new cross section ratio $R_{2\gamma/\gamma}=\sigma_{t\bar{t}\gamma\gamma}/\sigma_{t\bar{t}\gamma}$ and show the usefulness of this ratio in canceling most of the systematic uncertainties and its special functionality to constrain dipole moments. Finally, we use the scalar sum of the transverse momentum of jets, $H_{T}$, in order to define a signal-dominated region and obtain limits on these anomalous top couplings using different amounts of expected data from the LHC.

Effective field theory in the top sector: Do multijets help?

Many studies of possible new physics employ effective field theory (EFT), whereby corrections to the Standard Model take the form of higher-dimensional operators, suppressed by a large energy scale. Fits of such a theory to data typically use parton level observables, which limits the datasets one can use. In order to theoretically model search channels involving many additional jets, it is important to include tree-level matrix elements matched to a parton shower algorithm, and a suitable matching procedure to remove the double counting of additional radiation. There are then two potential problems: (i) EFT corrections are absent in the shower, leading to an extra source of discontinuities in the matching procedure; (ii) the uncertainty in the matching procedure may be such that no additional constraints are obtained from observables sensitive to radiation. In this paper, we review why the first of these is not a problem in practice, and perform a detailed study of the second. In particular, we quantify the additional constraints on EFT expected from top pair plus multijet events, relative to inclusive top pair production alone.

Multi-jet merged top-pair production including electroweak corrections

We present theoretical predictions for the production of top-quark pairs in association with jets at the LHC including electroweak (EW) corrections. First, we present and compare differential predictions at the fixed-order level for tbar{t} and tbar{t}+text {jet} production at the LHC considering the dominant NLO EW corrections of order {{mathcal {O}}}(alpha _mathrm {s}^2 alpha ) and {{mathcal {O}}}(alpha _mathrm {s}^3 alpha ) respectively together with all additional subleading Born and one-loop contributions. The NLO EW corrections are enhanced at large energies and in particular alter the shape of the top transverse momentum distribution, whose reliable modelling is crucial for many searches for new physics at the energy frontier. Based on the fixed-order results we motivate an approximation of the EW corrections valid at the percent level, that allows us to readily incorporate the EW corrections in the MePs@Nlo framework of Sherpa combined with OpenLoops. Subsequently, we present multi-jet merged parton-level predictions for inclusive top-pair production incorporating NLO QCD + EW corrections to tbar{t} and tbar{t}+text {jet}. Finally, we compare at the particle-level against a recent 8 TeV measurement of the top transverse momentum distribution performed by ATLAS in the lepton + jet channel. We find very good agreement between the Monte Carlo prediction and the data when the EW corrections are included.

Measurement of the inclusivett¯production cross section inpp¯collisions ats=1.96 TeVand determination of the top quark pole mass

The inclusive cross section of top quark-antiquark pairs produced in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV is measured in the lepton$+$jets and dilepton decay channels. The data sample corresponds to 9.7 fb${}^{-1}$ of integrated luminosity recorded with the D0 detector during Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Employing multivariate analysis techniques we measure the cross section in the two decay channels and we perform a combined cross section measurement. For a top quark mass of 172.5 GeV, we measure a combined inclusive top quark-antiquark pair production cross section of $\sigma_{t\bar{t}} = 7.26 \pm 0.13\,(\mathrm{stat.})\,^{+0.57}_{-0.50}\,(\mathrm{syst.})$ pb which is consistent with standard model predictions. We also perform a likelihood fit to the measured and predicted top quark mass dependence of the inclusive cross section, which yields a measurement of the pole mass of the top quark. The extracted value is $m_t = 172.8 \pm 1.1\,(\mathrm{theo.})\,^{+3.3}_{-3.1}\,(\mathrm{exp.})$ GeV.

Higgs effects in top anti-top production near threshold in e+e− annihilation

The completion of the third-order QCD corrections to the inclusive top-pair production cross section near threshold demonstrates that the strong dynamics is under control at the few percent level. In this paper we consider the effects of the Higgs boson on the cross section and, for the first time, combine the third-order QCD result with the third-order P-wave, the leading QED and the leading non-resonant contributions. We study the size of the different effects and investigate the sensitivity of the cross section to variations of the top-quark Yukawa coupling due to possible new physics effects.

Pinning down top dipole moments with ultraboosted tops

We investigate existing and future hadron-collider constraints on the top dipole chromomagnetic and chromoelectric moments, two quantities that are expected to be modified in the presence of new physics. We focus first on recent measurements of the inclusive top pair production cross section at the Tevatron and at the Large Hadron Collider. We then analyse the role of top-antitop events produced at very large invariant masses, in the context of the forthcoming 13-14 TeV runs of the LHC, and at a future 100 TeV proton-proton collider. In this latter case, the selection of semileptonic decays to hard muons allows to tag top quarks boosted to the multi-TeV regime, strongly reducing the QCD backgrounds and leading to a significant improvement in the sensitivity to anomalous top couplings.

Modification of Gaussian mixture models for data classification in high energy physics

In high energy physics, we deal with demanding task of signal separation from background. The Model Based Clustering method involves the estimation of distribution mixture parameters via the Expectation-Maximization algorithm in the training phase and application of Bayes' rule in the testing phase. Modifications of the algorithm such as weighting, missing data processing, and overtraining avoidance will be discussed. Due to the strong dependence of the algorithm on initialization, genetic optimization techniques such as mutation, elitism, parasitism, and the rank selection of individuals will be mentioned. Data pre-processing plays a significant role for the subsequent combination of final discriminants in order to improve signal separation efficiency. Moreover, the results of the top quark separation from the Tevatron collider will be compared with those of standard multivariate techniques in high energy physics. Results from this study has been used in the measurement of the inclusive top pair production cross section employing DØ Tevatron full Runll data (9.7 fb−1).

Measurement of inclusive top pair plus photon production cross-section

Measurement of inclusive top pair plus photon production cross-section

NNLO corrections to top pair production at hadron colliders: the quark-gluon reaction

Abstract We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order QCD correction to the total inclusive top pair production cross-section in the reaction $ qg\to t\overline{t}+X $ . We find moderate $ \mathcal{O} $ (1%) correction to central values at both Tevatron and LHC. The scale variation of the cross-section remains unchanged at the Tevatron and is significantly reduced at the LHC. We find that recently introduced approximation based on the high-energy limit of the top pair cross-section significantly deviates from the exact result. The results derived in the present work are included in version 1.4 of the program Top++. Work towards computing the reaction $ gg\to t\overline{t}+X $ is ongoing.

NNLO corrections to top-pair production at hadron colliders: the all-fermionic scattering channels

Abstract This is a second paper in our ongoing calculation of the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD correction to the total inclusive top-pair production cross-section at hadron colliders. In this paper we calculate the reaction $ q\overline{q}\to t\overline{t}+q\overline{q} $ which was not considered in our previous work on $ q\overline{q}\to t\overline{t}+X $ [1] due to its phenomenologically negligible size. We also calculate all remaining fermion-pair-initiated partonic channels $ q{q^{\prime }} $ , $ q{{\overline{q}}^{\prime }} $ and qq that contribute to top-pair production starting from NNLO. The contributions of these reactions to the total cross-section for top-pair production at the Tevatron and LHC are small, at the permil level. The most interesting feature of these reactions is their characteristic logarithmic rise in the high energy limit. We compute the constant term in the leading power behavior in this limit, and achieve precision that is an order of magnitude better than the precision of a recent theoretical prediction for this constant. All four partonic reactions computed in this paper are included in our numerical program Top++. The calculation of the NNLO corrections to the two remaining partonic reactions, $ qg\to t\overline{t}+X $ and $ gg\to t\overline{t}+X $ , is ongoing.

Inclusive top-pair production phenomenology with TOPIXS

We discuss various aspects of inclusive top-quark pair production based on TOPIXS, a new, flexible program that computes the production cross section at the Tevatron and LHC at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy in soft and Coulomb resummation, including bound-state effects and the complete next-to-next-to-leading order result in the q-qbar channel, which has recently become available. We present the calculation of the top-pair cross section in pp collisions at 8 TeV centre-of-mass energy, as well as the cross sections for hypothetical heavy quarks in extensions of the standard model. The dependence on the parton distribution input is studied. Further we investigate the impact of LHC top cross section measurements at sqrt(s)=7 TeV on global fits of the gluon distribution using the NNPDF re-weighting method.