Single Top Production as a Probe of Heavy Resonances

The single top quark final state provides sensitivity to new heavy resonances produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Particularly, the single top plus quark final state appears in models with heavy charged bosons or scalars, or in models with flavor-changing neutral currents involving the top quark. The cross sections and final state kinematics distinguish such models from each other and from standard model backgrounds. Several models of resonances decaying to a single top quark final state are presented and their phenomenology is discussed.

Single Top Production as a Probe of B-prime Quarks

We show how single top production at the LHC can be used to discover (and characterize the couplings of) B quarks, which are an essential part of many natural models of new physics beyond the Standard Model. We present the B effective model and concentrate on resonant production via a colored anomalous magnetic moment. Generally, Bs preferentially decay into a single top quark produced in association with a W boson; thus, this production process makes associated single top production essential to B searches at the LHC. We demonstrate the background processes are manageable and the signal cross section is sufficient to yield a large signal significance even during the 7 TeV LHC run. Specifically, we show that B masses of 700 GeV or more can be probed. Moreover, if a B is found, then the chirality of its coupling can be determined. Finally, we present signal cross sections for several different LHC energies.