Top-quark Rapidity Research Articles

Soft-gluon corrections for tqZ production

We study soft-gluon corrections for the associated production of a single top quark and a Z boson (tqZ production) at hadron colliders. We find that the radiative corrections are dominated by soft-gluon emission. We derive an approximate NNLO (aNNLO) cross section by adding second-order soft-gluon corrections to the exact NLO result. We calculate the aNNLO cross section at LHC energies, including uncertainties from scale dependence and from parton distributions. We also calculate differential distributions in top-quark rapidity. We show that the aNNLO corrections are significant and they enhance the NLO cross section while decreasing theoretical uncertainties.

Top Quark Production AsymmetriesAFBtandAFBℓ

A large forward-backward asymmetry is seen in both the top quark rapidity distribution $A_{FB}^t$ and in the rapidity distribution of charged leptons $A_{FB}^\ell$ from top quarks produced at the Tevatron. We study the kinematic and dynamic aspects of the relationship of the two observables arising from the spin correlation between the charged lepton and the top quark with different polarization states. We emphasize the value of both measurements, and we conclude that a new physics model which produces more right-handed than left-handed top quarks is favored by the present data.

Top quark rapidity distribution and forward-backward asymmetry

I present results for the top quark rapidity distribution at LHC and Tevatron energies, including higher-order corrections from threshold resummation. The next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) soft-gluon corrections at next-to-next-to-leading-logarithm (NNLL) level are added to the NLO result. Theoretical predictions are shown for the rapidity distribution, including the scale dependence of the distributions. The forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron is also calculated.

Photoproduction of top quarks in peripheral heavy ion collisions

In relativistic heavy ion collisions, top quarks can be produced by photon-gluon fusion when a photon from the Weizs\"acker-Williams virtual photon field of one nucleus interacts with a gluon in the other nucleus. Photoproduction with heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the first accessible non-hadronic top production channel. We calculate the $t \bar t$ photoproduction cross sections, pair mass and top quark rapidity distributions in peripheral heavy ion collisions. The cross sections are sensitive to the top quark charge and the large-$Q^2$ gluon distribution in the nucleus. We find a cross section of 94 pb in calcium-calcium collisions, leading to 190 pairs in a one month ($10^6$ sec) LHC run. We also find $p$Pb and $p$Ca cross sections of 5.8 and 3.4 pb respectively, resulting in 6 and 34 $t\bar t$ pairs per month.