The scalar top discovery potential has been studied with a full-statistics background simulation for sqrt(s) = 500 GeV and L = 500 fb-1. The simulation is based on a fast and realistic simulation of a TESLA detector. The large simulated data sample allowed the application of an Iterative Discriminant Analysis (IDA) which led to a significantly higher sensitivity than in previous studies. The effects of beam polarization on signal efficiency and individual background channels are studied using separate optimization with the IDA for both polarization states. The beam polarization is very important to measure the scalar top mixing angle and to determine its mass. Simulating a 180 GeV scalar top at minimum production cross section, we obtain Delta(m) = 1 GeV and Delta(cos(theta)) = 0.009.
We study the pair production of scalar top quarks in e+e- collisions with the subsequent decay of the top squarks into b-quarks and charginos. We simulate this process using PYTHIA6.4 for beam energies 2E_beam = 350, 400, 500, 800, 1000 GeV. Proposing a set of criteria we obtain a good separation of the signal stop events from top quark pair production which is the main background. The number of stop production events obtained with the proposed cuts for different energies is calculated for an integrated luminosity of 1000 1/fb. We propose a method to reconstruct the mass of the top squark, provided the mass of the lightest neutralino is known, and estimate the error of the mass determination for the case sqrt{s} = 500 GeV.
We discuss in detail top quark polarization in above-threshold (t bar t)-production at a polarized linear e^+ e^- collider. We pay particular attention to the minimization and maximization of the polarization of the top quark by tuning the longitudinal polarization of the e^+ and e^- beams. The polarization of the top quark is calculated in full next-to-leading order QCD. We also discuss the beam polarization dependence of the longitudinal spin-spin correlations of the top and antitop quark spins.
The cross section for the reaction $e^+e^- to tbar{t} H$ depends sensitively on the top quark Yukwawa coupling $lambda_t$. We calculate the rate for $tbar{t}H$ production, followed by the decay $Hto bbar{b}$, for a Standard Model Higgs boson with 100 < m_H <130 GeV. We interface with ISAJET to generate QCD radiation, hadronization and particle decays. We also calculate the dominant $tbar{t}bbar{b}$ backgrounds from electroweak and QCD processes. We consider both semileptonic and fully hadronic decays of the $tbar{t}$ system. In our analysis, we attempt full reconstruction of the top quark and W boson masses in the generated events. The invariant mass of the remaining b-jets should show evidence of Higgs boson production. We estimate the accuracy with which $lambda_t$ can be measured at a linear e^+e^- collider. Our results, including statistical but not systematic errors, show that the top quark Yukawa coupling can be measured to 6-8 % accuracy with 1000 fb^{-1} at $E_{CM}=1 TeV$, assuming 100 % efficiency for b-jet tagging. The accuracy of the measurement drops to 17-22 % if only a 60 % efficiency for b-tagging is achieved.
The physics programme for a coming electron linear collider is dominated by events with final states containing many jets. We develop in this paper the opinion that the best approach is to optimise the independent measurement of the tracks in the tracker, the photons in the electromagnetic calorimeter and the neutral hadrons in the camorimetry, together with a good lepton identification. This can be achieved with a high granularity calorimetry providing particle separation, through an efficient energy flow algorithm.
We carried out a feasibility study on the measurement of the branching ratio of H -> cc_bar at a future e+e- linear collider. We used the topological vertex reconstructing algorithm for accumulating secondary vertex information and the neural network for optimizing c quark selection. With an assumption of a light Higgs mass of 120 GeV/c^2, we estimated the statistical error of Br(H -> cc_bar) to be 20.1% or 25.7% depending on the number of vertex detector layers at the center-of-mass energy of 250 GeV and the intergrated luminosity of 500 fb^-1.