The top quark will be produced copiously at the LHC. This will make both detailed physics studies and the use of top quark decays for detector calibration possible. This talk reviews plans and prospects for top physics activities in the ATLAS and CMS experiments.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to provide proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV, yielding millions of of top quark events. The top-physics potential of the two general purpose experiments, ATLAS and CMS, is discussed according to state-of-the-art simulation of both physics and detectors. An overview is given of the most important results with emphasis on the expected improvements in our understanding of physics connected to the top quark.
Recent measurements of top quark properties at the LHC made with the ATLAS and CMS experiments are discussed. The presented results include top quark mass, width, top quark Yukawa coupling, forward-backward and charge asymmetries, spin correlations and polarization, and W boson polarization. The results are compared to the standard model predictions and limits on new physics from these measurements are also presented.
The new CERN proton-proton collider, the LHC, is about to start in 2007 its data taking. Millions of top quarks will be available out of these data, allowing to perform a wide range of precision measurements and searches for new physics. An overview of the planned top physics program accessible with ttbar events is given for the ATLAS and CMS experiments. A particular emphasis is put on the precision measurements of the top mass, top polarization and searches for new physics in top production and decay.
This paper provides a review of the experimental studies of processes with a single top quark at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider and the LHC proton-proton collider. Single top-quark production in the t-channel process has been measured at both colliders. The s-channel process has been observed at the Tevatron, and its rate has been also measured at the center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV at the LHC in spite of the comparatively harsher background contamination. LHC data also brought the observation of the associated production of a single top quark with a W boson as well as with a Z boson. The Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element |Vtb| is extracted from the single-top-quark production cross sections, and t-channel events are used to measure several properties of the top quark and set constraints on models of physics beyond the Standard Model. Rare final states with a single top quark are searched for, as enhancements in their production rates, if observed, would be clear signs of new physics.
Vector-like quarks (VLQs) that are partners of the heavy top and bottom quarks are predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model (SM). We explore the possibility that these states could explain not only the longstanding anomaly in the forward-backward asymmetry in $b$-quark production at LEP, $A_{rm FB}^b $, but also the more recent $sim 2sigma$ deviation of the cross section for the associated Higgs production with top quark pairs at the LHC, $sigma(ppto tbar t H)$. Introducing three illustrative models for VLQs with different representations under the SM gauge group, we show that the two anomalies can be resolved while satisfying all other theoretical and experimental constraints. In this case, the three different models predict VLQ states in the $1-2$ TeV mass range that can be soon probed at the LHC. In a second step, we discuss the sensitivity on the VLQ masses and couplings that could be obtained by means of a percent level accuracy in the measurement of ratios of partial Higgs decay widths, in particular $Gamma(H ! to! gammagamma)/Gamma(H ! to! ZZ^*)$ and $Gamma(H ! to ! bbar b)/Gamma(H ! to ! WW^*)$. We show that top and bottom VL partners with masses up to $sim 5$ TeV and exotic VLQs with masses in the $10$ TeV range can be probed at the high-luminosity LHC.