Top-quark spin correlation at Linear Colliders with anomalous couplings

We investigate the feasibility of probing anomalous top-quark couplings of $Wtb$, $Z t \bar{t}$, and $\gamma t \bar{t}$ in terms of an effective Lagrangian with dimension-six operators at future $e^+e^-$ linear colliders with a c. m. energy $\sqrt s \sim 500-800$ GeV. We first examine the constraints on these anomalous couplings from the $Z\to b \bar{b}$ data at LEP I and from unitarity considerations. We then consider in detail the effects of anomalous couplings on $t \bar{t}$ spin correlations in the top-pair production and decay with three spin bases: the helicity, beamline and off-diagonal bases. Our results show that the polarized beams are more suitable for exploring the effects of different new operators. For polarized beams, the helicity basis yields the best sensitivity.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, references adde

Search for single top quark production in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV

We present a search for electroweak production of single top quarks in the s-channel and t-channel using neural networks for signal-background separation. We have analyzed 230 pb$^{-1}$ of data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV and find no evidence for a single top quark signal. The resulting 95% confidence level upper limits on the single top quark production cross sections are 6.4 pb in the s-channel and 5.0 pb in the t-channel.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure