No Arabic abstract
We present results of a computation of NLO QCD corrections to the production of an off-shell top--antitop pair in association with an off-shell $text{W}^+$ boson in proton--proton collisions. As the calculation is based on the full matrix elements for the process $text{p}text{p}to {text{e}}^+ u_{text{e}},mu^-bar{ u}_mu,tau^+ u_tau,{text{b}},bar{text{b}}$, all off-shell, spin-correlation, and interference effects are included. The NLO QCD corrections are about $20%$ for the integrated cross-section. Using a dynamical scale, the corrections to most distributions are at the same level, while some distributions show much larger $K$-factors in suppressed regions of phase space. We have performed a second calculation based on a double-pole approximation. While the corresponding results agree with the full calculation within few per cent for integrated cross-sections, the discrepancy can reach $10%$ and more in regions of phase space that are not dominated by top--antitop production. As a consequence, on-shell calculations should only be trusted to this level of accuracy.
The high luminosity that will be accumulated at the LHC will enable precise differential measurements of the hadronic production of a top--antitop-quark pair in association with a $text{W}$ boson. Therefore, an accurate description of this process is needed for realistic final states. In this work we combine for the first time the NLO QCD and electroweak corrections to the full off-shell $text{t}overline{text{t}}{text{W}}^+$ production at the LHC in the three-charged-lepton channel, including all spin correlations, non-resonant effects, and interferences. To this end, we have computed the NLO electroweak radiative corrections to the leading QCD order as well as the NLO QCD corrections to both the QCD and the electroweak leading orders.
The measurement of polarization fractions of massive gauge bosons at the LHC provides an important check of the Standard Model and in particular of the Electroweak Symmetry Breaking mechanism. Owing to the unstable character of $text{W}$ and $text{Z}$ bosons, devising a theoretical definition for polarized signals is not straightforward and always subject to some ambiguity. Focusing on $text{W}$-boson pair production at the LHC in the fully leptonic channel, we propose to compute polarized cross-sections and distributions based on the gauge-invariant doubly-resonant part of the amplitude. We include NLO QCD corrections to the leading quark-induced partonic process and also consider the loop-induced gluon-initiated process contributing to the same final state. We present results for both an inclusive setup and a realistic fiducial region, with special focus on variables that are suited for the discrimination of polarized cross-sections and on quantities that can be measured experimentally.
The $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{H}(text{b}bar{text{b}})$ process is an essential channel to reveal the Higgs properties but has an irreducible background from the $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{b}bar{text{b}}$ process, which produces a top quark pair in association with a b quark pair. Therefore, understanding the $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{b}bar{text{b}}$ process is crucial for improving the sensitivity of a search for the $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{H}(text{b}bar{text{b}})$ process. To this end, when measuring the differential cross-section of the $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{b}bar{text{b}}$ process, we need to distinguish the b-jets originated from top quark decays, and additional b-jets originated from gluon splitting. Since there are no simple identification rules, we adopt deep learning methods to learn from data to identify the additional b-jets from the $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{b}bar{text{b}}$ events. Specifically, by exploiting the special structure of the $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{b}bar{text{b}}$ event data, we propose several loss functions that can be minimized to directly increase the matching efficiency, the accuracy of identifying additional b-jets. We discuss the difference between our method and another deep learning-based approach based on binary classification arXiv:1910.14535 using synthetic data. We then verify that additional b-jets can be identified more accurately by increasing matching efficiency directly rather than the binary classification accuracy, using simulated $text{t}bar{text{t}}text{b}bar{text{b}}$ event data in the lepton+jets channel from pp collision at $sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV.
We discuss lepton charge asymmetries in $t bar t$ and $t bar t gamma$ production at the LHC, which can be measured in the semileptonic decay channel $t bar t to W^+ b , W^- bar b to ell^+ u b , q bar q bar b$ (or the charge conjugate). Considering several variants of a new physics scenario with a light colour octet, it is seen that for $t bar t$ these asymmetries may have a sensitivity competitive with the dilepton asymmetry already measured. For $t bar t gamma$ the new leptonic asymmetries, as well as the $t bar t$ charge asymmetry, will reach their full potential with the high luminosity LHC upgrade. These asymmetries can pinpoint deviations at the $3sigma-4sigma$ level for new physics scenarios where the charge asymmetries already measured in $t bar t$ production agree within $1sigma$.
We extend and improve upon our previous calculation of electroweak top-quark pair hadroproduction in extensions of the Standard Model with extra heavy neutral and charged spin-1 resonances. In particular, we allow for flavour-non-diagonal $Z$ couplings and take into account non-resonant production in the SM and beyond including the contributions with $t$-channel $W$ and $W$ bosons. All amplitudes are generated using the Recola2 package. As in our previous work, we include NLO QCD corrections and consistently match to parton showers with the POWHEG method fully taking into account the interference effects between SM and new physics amplitudes. We consider the Sequential Standard Model, the Topcolour model, as well as the Third Family Hypercharge Model featuring non-flavour-diagonal $Z$ couplings which has been proposed recently to explain the anomalies in $B$ decays. We present numerical results for $t bar t$ cross sections at hadron colliders with a centre-of-mass energy up to 100 TeV.