Observation of Single Top Quark Production at the Tevatron

This paper reports on the first observation of electroweak production of single top quarks by the D0 and CDF collaborations. At Fermilab's 1.96 TeV proton-antiproton collider, a few thousand events are selected from several inverse femtobarns of data that contain an isolated electron or muon and/or missing transverse energy, together with jets that originate from the decays of b quarks. Using sophisticated multivariate analyses to separate signal from background, the D0 collaboration measures a cross section {sigma} (p{bar p} {yields} tb + X, tqb + X) = 3.94 {+-} 0.88 pb (for a top quark mass of 170 GeV) and the CDF collaboration measures a value of 2.3{sub -0.5}{sup +0.6} pb (for a top quark mass of 175 GeV). These values are consistent with theoretical predictions at next-to-leading order precision. Both measurements have a significance of 5.0 standard deviations, meeting the benchmark to be considered unambiguous observation

A Compact Beam Stop for a Rare Kaon Decay Experiment

We describe the development and testing of a novel beam stop for use in a rare kaon decay experiment at the Brookhaven AGS. The beam stop is located inside a dipole spectrometer magnet in close proximity to straw drift chambers and intercepts a high-intensity neutral hadron beam. The design process, involving both Monte Carlo simulations and beam tests of alternative beam-stop shielding arrangements, had the goal of minimizing the leakage of particles from the beam stop and the resulting hit rates in detectors, while preserving maximum acceptance for events of interest. The beam tests consisted of measurements of rates in drift chambers, scintilation counter hodoscopes, a gas threshold Cherenkov counter, and a lead glass array. Measurements were also made with a set of specialized detectors which were sensitive to low-energy neutrons, photons, and charged particles. Comparisons are made between these measurements and a detailed Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: 39 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Method

Top Quark Spin Polarization in ep Collision

We discuss the degree of spin polarization of single top quarks produced via $Wg$ fusion process in $ep$ collision at TESLA+HERAp and CLIC+LHC energies $\sqrt{s}=1.6$ and 5.3 TeV. For $eb \to t \bar{\nu}$ subprocess we show that the top quark spin is completely polarized when the spin basis is chosen in the direction of the incoming positron beam in the rest frame of top quark. A description on how to combine the cross sections of $e^{+}b\to t\bar{\nu}$ and $e^{+}g\to t\bar{b}\bar{\nu}$ processes is given. $e^{+}$-beam direction is taken to be the favorite top quark spin decomposition axis in its rest frame and it is found to be comparable with the ones in $pp$ collision. It is argued that theoretical simplicity and experimental clearness are the advantage of $ep$ collision.Comment: Revised version of Phys. Rev. D69 (2004)03401

Associated Production of a Z Boson and a Single Heavy-Quark Jet

The leading-order process for the production of a Z boson and a heavy-quark jet at hadron colliders is gQ -> ZQ (Q=c,b). We calculate this cross section at next-to-leading order at the Tevatron and the LHC, and compare it with other sources of ZQ events. This process is a background to new physics, and can be used to measure the heavy-quark distribution function.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures. Version to appear in Phys. Rev.

The fully differential single-top-quark cross section in next-to-leading order QCD

We present a new next-to-leading order calculation for fully differential single-top-quark final states. The calculation is performed using phase space slicing and dipole subtraction methods. The results of the methods are found to be in agreement. The dipole subtraction method calculation retains the full spin dependence of the final state particles. We show a few numerical results to illustrate the utility and consistency of the resulting computer implementations.Comment: 37 pages, latex, 2 ps figure

Single Top Quark at Future Hadron Colliders. Complete Signal and Background Study

We perform a detail theoretical study including decays and jet fragmentation of all the important modes of the single top quark production and all basic background processes at the upgraded Tevatron and LHC colliders. Special attention was paid to the complete tree level calculation of the QCD fake background which was not considered in the previous studies. Analysis of the various kinematical distributions for the signal and backgrounds allowed to work out a set of cuts for an efficient background suppression and extraction of the signal. It was shown that the signal to background ratio after optimized cuts could reach about 0.4 at the Tevatron and 1 at the LHC. The remaining after cuts rate of the signal at the LHC for the $lepton+jets$ signature is expected to be about 6.1 pb and will be enough to study the single top physics even during the LHC operation at a low luminosity.Comment: 15 pages, LaTex, 7 figure

Higgs-Boson Production Induced by Bottom Quarks

Bottom quark-induced processes are responsible for a large fraction of the LHC discovery potential, in particular for supersymmetric Higgs bosons. Recently, the discrepancy between exclusive and inclusive Higgs boson production rates has been linked to the choice of an appropriate bottom factorization scale. We investigate the process kinematics at hadron colliders and show that it leads to a considerable decrease in the bottom factorization scale. This effect is the missing piece needed to understand the corresponding higher order results. Our results hold generally for charged and for neutral Higgs boson production at the LHC as well as at the Tevatron. The situation is different for single top quark production, where we find no sizeable suppression of the factorization scale. Turning the argument around, we can specify how large the collinear logarithms are, which can be resummed using the bottom parton picture.Comment: 18 page

Direct Top Quark Production at Hadron Colliders as a Probe of New Physics

We examine the effect of an anomalous flavor changing chromomagnetic moment which allows direct top quark production (two partons combining into an unaccompanied single top quark in the s-channel) at hadron colliders. We consider both t-c-g and t-u-g couplings. We find that the anomalous charm quark coupling parameter $\kappa_c / \Lambda$ can be measured down to $.06 TeV^{-1}(.009 TeV^{-1}$) at the Tevatron with the Main Injector upgrade(LHC). The anomalous up quark coupling parameter $\kappa_u / \Lambda$ can be measured to $.02 TeV^{-1}(.003 TeV^{-1}$) at the Tevatron(LHC).Comment: 14 pages, Latex, requires feynm

Single Top Production as a Window to Physics Beyond the Standard Model

Production of single top quarks at a high energy hadron collider is studied as a means to identify physics beyond the standard model related to the electroweak symmetry breaking. The sensitivity of the $s$-channel $W^*$ mode, the $t$-channel $W$-gluon fusion mode, and the \tw mode to various possible forms of new physics is assessed, and it is found that the three modes are sensitive to different forms of new physics, indicating that they provide complimentary information about the properties of the top quark. Polarization observables are also considered, and found to provide potentially useful information about the structure of the interactions of top.Comment: References added and minor discussion improvements; results unchanged; Version to be published in PR

Evidence of Color Coherence Effects in W+jets Events from ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV

We report the results of a study of color coherence effects in ppbar collisions based on data collected by the D0 detector during the 1994-1995 run of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV. Initial-to-final state color interference effects are studied by examining particle distribution patterns in events with a W boson and at least one jet. The data are compared to Monte Carlo simulations with different color coherence implementations and to an analytic modified-leading-logarithm perturbative calculation based on the local parton-hadron duality hypothesis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Physics Letters