A review of the main recent results on top quark production from the ATLAS and CMS experiments is presented. Results on both electroweak single top quark production and strong top pair production are presented.
Single top-quark t-channel production is exploited for studies of top quark properties. The analyses include the measurement of the CKM matrix element, $|V_{tb}|$, search for anomalous couplings of the top quark using a Bayesian neural network analysis, measurement of single top-quark polarization which directly confirms the V-A nature of the $tWb$ production vertex, and the measurement of W-helicity fractions in the phase space sampled by a selection optimized for t-channel single top-quark production, orthogonal to the $toverline{t}$ final states used in traditional measurements of these properties. All measurements are found to be consistent with the standard model predictions.
The large ttbar production cross-section at the LHC suggests the use of top quark decays to calibrate several critical parts of the detectors, such as the trigger system, the jet energy scale and b-tagging.
Measurements of several top-quark properties, obtained from the CMS data collected in 2011 and 2012 at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV are presented. The results include measurements of the top pair charge asymmetry, the W helicity in top quark decays and the search for anomalous couplings, the top quark charge, and of the ttbar spin correlation. The fraction of top quarks decaying into a W-boson and a b-quark relative to all top quark decays, R=Br(t->Wb)/Br(t->Wq), as well as, the cross sections of ttbar events produced in association with a photon or a W or a Z boson are also presented.
Single-top production processes have been studied using 0.7 fb-1 of data from 7 TeV center-of-mass energy proton-proton collisions collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Single-top is electroweak top production and the standard model includes three production modes. Each contains a Wtb vertex, allowing the possibility of a direct measurement of the CKM matrix element |Vtb|. Single-top could also be sensitive to new physics, such as flavor changing neutral currents or heavy W bosons. Using cut-based selections, a limit of < 39.1 pb is set for dilepton Wt production and < 26.5 pb for s-channel production. For the t-channel measurement, both cut-based and neural network analyses are performed and the cross-section is measured to be 90 +32 -22 pb, where 65 +28 -19 pb is expected according to standard model.
Measurements involving top quarks provide important tests of QCD. A selected set of top quark measurements in CMS including the strong coupling constant, top quark pole mass, constraints on parton distribution functions, top quark pair differential cross sections, ttbar+0 and >0 jet events, top quark mass studied using various kinematic variables in different phase-space regions, and alternative top quark mass measurements is presented. The evolution of expected uncertainties in future LHC runs for the standard and alternative top quark mass measurements is also presented.