No Arabic abstract
A precise measurement of the top quark mass, a fundamental parameter of the Standard Model, is among the most important goals of top quark studies at the Large Hadron Collider. Apart from the standard methods, numerous new observables and reconstruction techniques are employed to improve the overall precision and to provide different sensitivities to various systematic uncertainties. Recently, the normalised inverse invariant mass distribution of the $tbar{t}$ system and the leading extra jet not coming from the top quark decays has been proposed for the $pp to tbar{t}j$ production process, denoted as ${cal R}(m_t^{pole},rho_s)$. In this paper, a thorough study of different theoretical predictions for this observable, however, with top quark decays included, is carried out. We focus on fixed order NLO QCD calculations for the di-lepton top quark decay channel at the LHC with $sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. First, the impact on the extraction of $m_t$ is investigated and afterwards the associated uncertainties are quantified. In one approach we include all interferences, off-shell effects and non-resonant backgrounds. This is contrasted with a different approach with top quark decays in the narrow width approximation. In the latter case, two cases are employed: NLO QCD corrections to the $ppto tbar{t}j$ production process with leading order decays and the more sophisticated case with QCD corrections and jet radiation present also in top quark decays. The top quark mass sensitivity of ${cal R}(m_t^{pole},rho_s)$ is investigated and compared to other observables: the invariant mass of the top anti-top pair, the minimal invariant mass of the $b$-jet and a charged lepton as well as the total transverse momentum of the $tbar{t}j$ system.
Precision studies of the properties of the top quark represent a cornerstone of the LHC physics program. In this contribution we focus on the production of $tbar{t}$ pairs in association with one hard jet and in particular on its connection with precision measurements of the top quark mass at the LHC. We report a summary of a full calculation of the process $pp to e^+ u_emu^-bar{ u}_mu b bar{b}j$ at NLO QCD accuracy, which describes $tbar{t}j$ production with leptonic decays beyond the Narrow Width Approximation (NWA), and discuss the impact of the off-shell effects through comparisons with NWA. Finally we explore the sensitivity of $tbar{t}j$ in the context of top-quark mass extraction with the template method, considering two benchmark observables as case studies.
We consider the top quark charge asymmetry in the process $pp to tbar{t}+gamma$ at the 13 TeV LHC. The genuine tree level asymmetry in the $qbar{q}$ channel is large with about -12%. However, the symmetric $gg$ channel, photon radiation off top quark decay products, and higher order corrections wash out the asymmetry and obscure its observability. In this work, we investigate these effects at next-to-leading order QCD and check the robustness of theoretical predictions. We find a sizable perturbative correction and discuss its origins and implications. We also study dedicated cuts for enhancing the asymmetry and show that a measurement is possible with an integrated luminosity of 150 fb$^{-1}$.
The top-quark is the heaviest known particle of the Standard Model (SM); its heavy mass plays a crucial role in testing the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism and for searching for new physics beyond the SM. In this paper, we determine the top-quark pole mass from recent measurements at the LHC at $sqrt{S}=13$ TeV center-of-mass energy to high precision by applying the Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) to the $tbar{t}$ pQCD production cross-section at NNLO. The PMC provides a systematic method which rigorously eliminates QCD renormalization scale ambiguities by summing the nonconformal $beta$ contributions into the QCD coupling constant. The PMC predictions satisfy the requirements of renormalization group invariance, including renormalization scheme independence, and the PMC scales accurately reflect the virtuality of the underlying production subprocesses. By using the PMC, an improved prediction for the $tbar{t}$ production cross-section is obtained without scale ambiguities, which in turn provides a precise value for the top-quark pole mass. The resulting determination of the top-quark pole mass $m_t^{rm pole}=172.5pm1.2$ GeV from the LHC measurement at $sqrt{S}=13$ TeV is in agreement with the current world average cited by the Particle Data Group (PDG). The PMC prediction provides an important high-precision test of the consistency of pQCD and the SM at $sqrt{S}=13$ TeV with previous LHC measurements at lower CM energies.
We have implemented a code for Z + n jets production in ALPGEN, with Z decays into several final states, including l+ l- and t tbar. The MLM prescription is used for matching the matrix element with the parton shower, including in this way the leading soft and collinear corrections. In order to demonstrate its capabilities, we perform a combined analysis of Z -> t tbar and Z -> t tbar j production for a heavy leptophobic gauge boson. It is found that the effect of the extra jet cannot only be accounted for by a K factor multiplying the leading-order cross section. In fact, the combined analysis for Z -> t tbar and Z -> t tbar j presented improves the statistical significance of the signal by 25% (8.55 sigma versus 6.77 sigma for a Z mass of 1 TeV), compared with the results of an inclusive analysis carried out on the same sample of t tbar + t tbar j events.
In this work, we investigate the prompt $J/psi$ production in associated with top quark pair to leading order in the nonrelativistic QCD factorization formalism at the LHC with $sqrt{s} =13$ TeV. In addition to the contribution from direct $J/psi$ production, we also include the indirect contribution from the directly produced heavier charmmonia $chi_{cJ}$ and $psi^prime$. We present the numerical results for the total and differential cross sections and find that the $sideset{^3}{^{(8)}_1}{mathop{{S}}}$ states give the dominant contributions. The prompt $tbar t J/psi$ signatures at the LHC are analyzed in the tetralepton channel $ppto (tto W^+(ell^+ u)b) (bar t to W^-(ell^- bar u)bar b) (J/psitomu^+mu^-)$ and trilepton channel $ppto (tto W(q q^prime)b) ( t to W(ell u) b) (J/psitomu^+mu^-)$, with the $J/psi$ mesons decaying into muon pair, and the top quarks decaying leptonically or hadronically. We find that $tbar t J/psi$ proudction can be potentially detected at the LHC, whose measurement is useful to test the heavy quarkonium production mechanism.