Top-quark production measurements

Recent measurements of top-quark production at hadron colliders are reviewed. The inclusive top-quark pair production is determined at four centre-of-mass energies at Tevatron and LHC with experimental uncertainties that are close to the uncertainties in theoretical calculations at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD. Several differential measurements are performed and compared to simulation. Production of single top quarks is studied in the three different production channels. Top-quark pair production with neutral and charged vector bosons has been observed by the LHC experiments. Finally, production of additional heavy flavour quark pairs ($b\bar{b}$, $t\bar{t}$) is studied or searched for.Comment: on behalf of the ATLAS, CDF, CMS, D0 and LHCb Collaborations. Conference proceedings for Lepton Photon, Ljubljana, 17-22 August 2015, 21 pages, 18 figure

The PDF4LHC report on PDFs and LHC data: Results from Run I and preparation for Run II

The accurate determination of the Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) of the proton is an essential ingredient of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) program. PDF uncertainties impact a wide range of processes, from Higgs boson characterisation and precision Standard Model measurements to New Physics searches. A major recent development in modern PDF analyses has been to exploit the wealth of new information contained in precision measurements from the LHC Run I, as well as progress in tools and methods to include these data in PDF fits. In this report we summarise the information that PDF-sensitive measurements at the LHC have provided so far, and review the prospects for further constraining PDFs with data from the recently started Run II. This document aims to provide useful input to the LHC collaborations to prioritise their PDF-sensitive measurements at Run II, as well as a comprehensive reference for the PDF-fitting collaborations.Comment: 55 pages, 13 figure

TOP2017: Experimental Summary

At the time of the 10th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics (TOP2017), top quark physics is a very dynamic research area. Thanks to the unprecedentedly fast accumulation of high-energy data at the LHC during the ongoing Run~2, statistical starvation is a matter of the past for most of the traditional top-quark analyses, that are now experiencing the luxury of having to worry about how to punch through the "Systematics Wall" and maximize the utility of their data. New processes involving top quarks are being studied for the first time, and the good old pair-production processes are being explored in unusual settings, such as collisions involving heavy ions, or "reference data" collected by the LHC at relatively low centre-of-mass energy. The TOP2017 conference featured 37 talks delivered by experimental physicists, including seven in the "Young Scientists Forum" where young colleagues were given the opportunity to elaborate more deeply than usual on their own work. As it is impossible to do justice to all the experimental results presented at this conference while staying within a reasonable length, this document contains a very biased selection, mostly based on the personal taste of the author.Comment: Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics, Braga, Portugal, September 17-22, 201

Top-Quark Physics at the LHC

The top quark is the heaviest of all known elementary particles. It was discovered in 1995 by the CDF and D0 experiments at the Tevatron. With the start of the LHC in 2009, an unprecedented wealth of measurements of the top quark's production mechanisms and properties have been performed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, most of these resulting in smaller uncertainties than those achieved previously. At the same time, huge progress was made on the theoretical side yielding significantly improved predictions up to next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. Due to the vast amount of events containing top quarks, a variety of new measurements became feasible and opened a new window to precisions tests of the Standard Model and to contributions of new physics. In this review, originally written for a recent book on the results of LHC Run 1, top-quark measurements obtained so far from the LHC Run 1 are summarised and put in context with the current understanding of the Standard Model.Comment: 35 pages, 25 figures. To appear in "The Large Hadron Collider -- Harvest of Run 1", Thomas Sch\"orner-Sadenius (ed.), Springer, 2015 (532 pages, 253 figures; ISBN 978-3-319-15000-0; eBook ISBN 978-3-319-15001-7, for more details, see http://www.springer.com/de/book/9783319150000

DIS2015 Heavy Flavours Working Group Summary

Studies presented in the heavy flavours working group are summarized. Very recent results of measurements at the HERA, LHC, Tevatron, STAR, PHENIX, and BaBar experiments are reviewed and new developments in theory and phenomenology are discussed. In particular, aspects of the impact of heavy flavours on global QCD analyses to determine the structure of the proton, and analyses in physics beyond the Standard Model are considered.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, Conference proceeding summary, DIS2015 "The XXIII International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects", April 27 - May 1, 2015, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, US

Top-quark physics at the Large Hadron Collider

This experimental review gives an overview of top-quark measurements performed by the two general purpose-detectors ATLAS and CMS during the first few years of running of the Large Hadron Collider. In the years 2010 - 2012 each experiment collected 5 fb$^{-1}$ of pp collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV and 20 fb$^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV, allowing detailed studies of top-quark production and decays, and measurements of the properties of the top quark with unprecedented precision.Comment: 54 pages, 42 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in J. Phys.

Top-quark pair production at hadron colliders: differential cross section and phenomenological applications with DiffTop

The results of phenomenological studies of top-quark pair production in proton-proton collisions are presented. Differential cross sections are calculated in perturbative QCD at approximate next-to-next-to-leading order ${\cal O}(\alpha_s^4)$ by using methods of threshold resummation beyond the leading logarithmic accuracy. Predictions for the single-particle inclusive kinematics are presented for transverse momentum and rapidity distributions of final-state top quarks. Uncertainties related to the description of proton structure, top-quark mass and strong coupling constant are investigated in detail. The results are compared to the recent measurements by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC at the center of mass energy of 7 TeV. The calculation presented here is implemented in the computer code \textsc{Difftop} and can be applied to the general case of heavy-quark pair production at hadron-hadron colliders. For the first time, a fit of parton distribution functions at NNLO is performed by using the differential cross sections of top-quark pair production together with other data sets. The impact of the top-pair production on the precision of the gluon distribution at high scales is illustrated.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, regular article. Version accepted for a publication on JHE