arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Susanne Westhoff.
I review the current status of the charge asymmetry in hadronic top-quark pair production from a theory perspective. The standard-model predictions for the observables at the Tevatron and LHC are being discussed, as well as possible explanations of the Tevatron excess in terms of new physics. I give an outlook for future investigations of the top-quark charge asymmetry, focussing on novel observables at the LHC.
We investigate the discovery potential of the top-quark charge asymmetry at the LHC in top-antitop production in association with a hard jet. In this process, the charge asymmetry can be accessed via two novel observables: the incline asymmetry, which probes the quark-antiquark channel, and the energy asymmetry, which gives access to the quark-gluon channel. At 8 TeV collision energy, the significance for both observables is statistically limited. With 14 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 50 inverse fb or more, an asymmetry of up to -12% can be observed with a statistical significance of more than 5 standard deviations. Prospects of measuring the charge asymmetry at the intended high-luminosity and high-energy LHC upgrades are discussed.
We propose two new observables to measure the charge asymmetry in hadronic top-quark pair production in association with a hard jet. The incline asymmetry, based on the inclination between the planes of initial- and final-state momenta, probes the charge asymmetry in the quark-antiquark channel. Compared to the hitherto investigated rapidity asymmetries, the incline asymmetry provides improved access to the partonic charge asymmetry at both the Tevatron and the LHC. The energy asymmetry, based on the energy difference between top and antitop quarks, for the first time allows us to probe the charge asymmetry in the quark-gluon channel at the LHC. In quantum chromodynamics, asymmetries of up to -12% at the leading order are achievable with appropriate cuts. Top-pair plus jet production thus has the potential to become the discovery channel of the charge asymmetry in proton-proton collisions.
Pairs of top and antitop quarks are produced at the LHC to a large extent in association with a hard jet. We investigate the charge asymmetry in top pair + jet production in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and with additional massive color-octet vector bosons. The total charge asymmetry at the LHC is suppressed by the large charge-symmetric background from gluon-gluon fusion. We show to what extent the asymmetry can be enhanced by suitable phase space cuts and, in particular, elaborate on the kinematics of the hard jet in the top pair + jet final state. We demonstrate that in QCD, the asymmetry amounts to -1.5% for central jets without an excessive reduction of the cross section. By applying additional kinematical cuts, the asymmetry can be enhanced to -4%, but at the cost of a strong reduction of the cross section. Massive color-octet states can generate sizeable effects in top pair + jet production, both on the charge asymmetry and on the cross section. The charge asymmetry probes both vector and axial-vector couplings to quarks. We show that massive color octets can generate asymmetries up to +-10% for moderate and up to +-30% for strong kinematical cuts to be used in experimental analyses at the LHC. Jet kinematics can be used to obtain further information about the nature of the couplings and thereby to discriminate between different models.
A critical survey of the existing direct and indirect constraints on massive spin-one color octets is presented. Since such new degrees of freedom appear in any extension of the color gauge group to a product of at least two SU(3) factors, we keep our discussion as independent as possible from the underlying theory. In the framework of scenarios that involve flavor non-universal couplings, we show that excessive flavor-changing neutral currents can be avoided by a suitable alignment in flavor space. Constraints from electroweak precision observables and direct production at hadron colliders still leave space for sizable new-physics effects in top-quark pair production, in particular a large forward-backward asymmetry. In this context, we derive a model-independent upper bound on the asymmetry that applies whenever top-antitop production receives the dominant corrections from s-channel exchange of a new single color-octet resonance.
Several recent measurements at the Tevatron experiments point towards an anomalously large forward-backward asymmetry in top-antitop production. This article summarizes the main classes of physics beyond the standard model that can give rise to a large asymmetry. Complementary measurements at the Large Hadron Collider will allow to distinguish between different models and thereby contribute to clarifying the presently puzzling picture.
Top-quark pair production at the Tevatron is discussed within the Randall-Sundrum model of warped extra dimensions. Generically, the exchange of massive Kaluza-Klein gluons has the potential to generate a large forward-backward asymmetry. In models with an anarchic flavor structure, however, their coupling to the light quarks inside the proton is strongly suppressed. The consequent suppression of the asymmetry at tree level is lifted at next-to-leading order. Still, it is not possible to increase the forward-backward asymmetry with respect to the Standard-Model prediction in this framework.
We calculate the ttbar forward-backward asymmetry, A_FB^t, in Randall-Sundrum (RS) models taking into account the dominant next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections in QCD. At Born level we include the exchange of Kaluza-Klein (KK) gluons and photons, the Z boson and its KK excitations, as well as the Higgs boson, whereas beyond the leading order (LO) we consider the interference of tree-level KK-gluon exchange with one-loop QCD box diagrams and the corresponding bremsstrahlungs corrections. We find that the strong suppression of LO effects, that arises due to the elementary nature and the mostly vector-like couplings of light quarks, is lifted at NLO after paying the price of an additional factor of alpha_s/(4 pi). In spite of this enhancement, the resulting RS corrections in A_FB^t remain marginal, leaving the predicted asymmetry SM-like. As our arguments are solely based on the smallness of the axial-vector couplings of light quarks to the strong sector, our findings are model-independent and apply to many scenarios of new physics that address the flavor problem via geometrical sequestering.
We probe the unification of down quarks and leptons in a supersymmetric SO(10) GUT. The large atmospheric neutrino mixing angle induces bR-sR transitions, which can account for the sizeable CP phase measured in Bs-Bsbar mixing. Corrections to down-quark-lepton unification from higher-dimensional Yukawa terms translate neutrino mixing also into sR-dR and bR-dR currents. We find the flavour structure of Yukawa corrections to be strongly constrained by epsilonK.
We consider corrections to the unification of down-quark and charged-lepton Yukawa couplings in supersymmetric GUTs, which links the large nu_tau-nu_mu mixing angle to b -> s transitions. These corrections generically occur in simple grand-unified models with small Higgs representations and affect s -> d and b -> d transitions via the mixing of the corresponding right-handed superpartners. On the basis of a specific SUSY-SO(10) model, we analyze the constraints from K-Kbar and B-Bbar mixing on the additional \tilde{d}_R-\tilde{s}_R rotation angle theta. We find that epsilon_K already sets a stringent bound on theta, theta^{max}=O(1 degree), indicating a very specific flavor structure of the correction operators. The impact of the large neutrino mixings on the unitarity triangle analysis is also briefly discussed, as well as their ability to account for the sizeable CP-violating phase observed recently in B_s -> psi phi decays.
We show that the decay mode B -> D tau nu is competitive with and complementary to B -> tau nu in the search for charged-Higgs effects. Updating the relevant form factors, we find that the differential distribution in the decay chain B -> D nu tau[-> pi nu] excellently discriminates between Standard-Model and charged-Higgs contributions. By measuring the D and pi energies and the angle between the D and pi three-momenta one can determine the effective charged-Higgs coupling including a possible CP-violating phase.