Effects of Higgs sector CP violation in top-quark pair production at the LHC

A striking manifestation of CP violation in the electroweak symmetry breaking sector would be the existence of neutral Higgs boson(s) with undefined CP parity. We analyse signatures of such a boson, with a mass of about 300 GeV or larger, produced in high energy proton-proton collisions at LHC energies in its top-quark antitop-quark decay channel. The large irreducible $t\bar t$ background is taken into account. We propose, both for the dilepton and the lepton + jets decay channels of $t\bar t$, several correlations and asymmetries with which (Higgs sector) CP violation can be traced. We show that for judiciously chosen cuts on the $t\bar t$ invariant mass these CP observables yield, for an LHC integrated luminosity of 100 $\rm{fb}^{-1}$, statistically significant signals for a range of Higgs boson masses and Yukawa couplings.Comment: 36 pages, 25 Postscript figure

Chiral-invariant CP-violating Effective Interactions in Z Decays to three Jets

Tests of CP violation by appropriate momentum correlations in $Z\to 3$ jets and in particular in $Z\to b\bar bX$ probe CP-violating effective couplings -- that manifest themselves as form factors -- which conserve the quark chirality and quark flavour. By giving two examples we show that such couplings can be induced at one-loop order in extensions of the Standard Model with CP violation beyond the Kobayashi-Maskawa phase. In one of the models we compute the chirality-conserving part of the CP-violating $Zb{\bar b}$-gluon amplitude for massless $b$ quarks, determine the resulting effective dimension $d=6$ couplings in the local limit, and discuss the possible size of the effects. Finally we show that in models with excited quarks the chiral-invariant CP-violating effective interactions could be quite large if appropriate couplings are of a size characteristic of a strong interactionComment: 14 pages, LaTeX with 4 postscript figures, epsf macro include

Spin properties of top quark pairs produced at hadron colliders

We discuss the spin properties of top quark pairs produced at hadron colliders at next-to-leading order in the coupling constant alpha_s of the strong interaction. Specifically we present, for some decay channels, results for differential angular distributions that are sensitive to t tbar spin correlations.Comment: Invited talk given by A. Brandenburg at the Cracow epiphany conference on heavy flavours, 3 - 6 January 2003, Cracow, Polan

QCD corrections to top quark spin correlations at hadron colliders

Future hadron collider experiments will allow for a detailed investigation of $t\bar{t}$ spin correlation effects. In this talk, recent progress in the theoretical description of these effects is reported. In particular, next-to-leading order results for the $t\bar t$ spin correlations in $q\bar{q}\to t\bar{t}X$ are presented, using various spin quantization axes.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. Talk presented at the conference `QCD 00', Montpellier, 6-13th July 2000, to appear in the proceeding

Investigation of Top quark spin correlations at hadron collider

We report on our results about hadronic $t\bar t$ production at NLO QCD including $t, \bar t$ spin effects, especially on $t\bar t$ spin correlations.Comment: talk given at the 32nd International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP'04), Beijing, China, 16-22 Aug. 200

CP Violation Beyond the Standard Model and Tau Pair Production in e+e−e^+ e^- Collisions

We show that the CP-violating dipole form factors of the tau lepton can be of the order of $\alpha/\pi$ in units of the length scale set by the inverse $Z$ boson mass. We propose a few observables which are sensitive to these form factors at LEP2 and higher e^+e^- collision energies.Comment: 11 pages LaTeX + 2 figure

Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to top quark spin correlations at hadron colliders: the reactions gg→ttˉ(g)g g \to t {\bar t} (g) and gq(qˉ)→ttˉq(qˉ)g q ({\bar q}) \to t {\bar t} q ({\bar q})

We have computed the cross section for $t\bar t$ production by gluon-gluon fusion at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the QCD coupling, keeping the full dependence on the $t\bar t$ spins. Furthermore we have determined to the same order the spin dependent cross sections for the processes $g + q ({\bar q})\to t {\bar t} + q ({\bar q})$. Together with our previous results for $q + {\bar q} \to t {\bar t} (g)$ these results allow for predictions, at NLO QCD, of the hadronic production of $t\bar t$ pairs in a general spin configuration. As an application we have determined the degree of correlation of the $t$ and $\bar t$ spins at NLO, using various spin quantisation axes.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Top Production in Hadron-Hadron Collisions and Anomalous Top-Gluon Couplings

We discuss the influence of anomalous tbar-t-G couplings on total and differential tbar-t production cross sections in hadron-hadron collisions. We study in detail the effects of a chromoelectric and a chromomagnetic dipole moment, d' and \mu', of the top quark. In the d'-\mu' plane, we find a whole region where the anomalous couplings give a zero net contribution to the total top production rate. In differential cross sections, the anomalous moments have to be quite sizable to give measurable effects. We estimate the values of d' and \mu' which are allowed by the present Tevatron experimental results on top production. A chromoelectric dipole moment of the top violates CP invariance. We discuss a simple CP-odd observable which allows for a direct search for CP violation in top production.Comment: footnote pg. 4 changed, acknowledgments extende

CP Violation in radiative Z Decays

We propose to test the CP symmetry in the reactions Z -> mu+ mu- gamma and Z -> tau+ tau- gamma. The experimental analysis of angular correlations allows to determine a set of effective couplings: the electric and weak dipole moments of the muon and the tau lepton, and in particular chirality conserving 4-particle couplings, all of which can be induced by CP--violation in renormalizable theories of electroweak interactions beyond the Standard Model. We update an indirect bound on the weak dipole moment of the muon.Comment: 19 pages, Latex, 4 Figures in PostScript forma