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arXiv · 2510.04590

On the threshold behaviour of heavy top production

Abstract

The observation of an excess of ttbar production in the threshold region, by CMS and ATLAS, has been interpreted as a toponium contribution, i.e. from below-threshold ttbar virtual states. The news here is the nontrivial experimental extraction of such a signal, not its existence as such. Indeed, already 35+ years ago an NRQCD Green's function approach was used to model the above- and below-threshold production of ttbar pairs in pp/ppbar collisions. The relevant cross section equations from that study are now (re-)implemented in the Pythia 8 event generator. While the above-threshold part is straightforward, the physical interpretation and modelling of below-threshold events is nontrivial, and a final prescription is cross-checked against two simpler ones. Cross sections and some event properties are presented.

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Torbjörn Sjöstrand. 2025-10-06. On the threshold behaviour of heavy top production. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04590

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