Top quark and leptonic charge asymmetries for the Tevatron and LHC

We compute, for $t \bar t$ production at the LHC and at the Tevatron, several charge asymmetries to NLO QCD, including also the electromagnetic and weak-interaction corrections. We calculate these asymmetries both inclusively and with additional kinematic cuts and compare our results, where possible, with recent experimental results and with SM predictions. The $t \bar t$ asymmetries induce also corresponding asymmetries for the charged leptons from semileptonic top-quark decay. Although these asymmetries are, in the SM, smaller than the corresponding ones for top quarks, they are expected to be measurable quite precisely. In fact, measurement of a lepton asymmetry in $\ell$ + jets events was reported by the D$\emptyset$ and CDF experiments. We analyze and compute to NLO in the gauge couplings leptonic charge asymmetries for dileptonic and semileptonic \ttbar events, with and without acceptance cuts, at the Tevatron and the LHC.Comment: Some references and a note added on comparisons with recent experimental results. Published in Phys. Rev. D 86, 034026 (2012

Distributions and correlations for top quark pair production and decay at the Tevatron and LHC.

We investigate a number of observables that are and will be instrumental in the exploration of \tbart production and decay at the Tevatron and the LHC. For this analysis we made a computer program that incorporates besides the NLO QCD corrections to \tbart production and decay also mixed weak-QCD corrections to the production amplitudes, and that allows for studies of correlated versus uncorrelated \tbart events. In this paper we analyze and compute observables mostly for dileptonic \tbart final states to next-to-leading order in the strong and weak gauge couplings (NLOW), with selection cuts. We calculate charge asymmetries of the top quark and of $\ell=e,\mu$ and we compare, where possible, with experimental results. We show that top-quark spin correlations affect a leptonic pair asymmetry (which has not been measured so far) by $\sim 7$. We determine several dileptonic angular correlations, which reflect \tbart spin correlations, namely the beam, off-diagonal and helicity correlation, and the opening angle distribution (defined in the $t$, $\bar t$ rest frames) when selection cuts are applied. Our NLOW predictions for the beam, off-diagonal, and helicity correlation for the Tevatron agree with recent measurements by the CDF and D0 experiments. In addition we make predictions for estimators of these correlations as functions of \mtt. These estimators may prove useful for the Tevatron and also in the early rounds of LHC data-analyses, where the event numbers will probably not be abundant. Furthermore, we compute to NLOW in the gauge couplings two dilepton angular correlations that are defined in the laboratory frame, for correlated and uncorrelated \tbart events at the LHC. Finally, based on our SM results, we identify several observables that allow to search for non-standard parity- and CP-violating interactions, especially with future LHC data.Comment: Latex, 39 pages, 39 figures, 4 table

A set of top quark spin correlation and polarization observables for the LHC: Standard Model predictions and new physics contributions

We consider top-antitop quark ($t{\bar t}$) production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with subsequent decay into dileptonic and lepton plus jets final states. We present a set of leptonic angular correlations and distributions with which experiments can probe all the independent coefficient functions of the top-spin dependent parts of the $t{\bar t}$ production spin density matrices. We compute these angular correlations and distributions for LHC center-of-mass energies 8, 13, and 14 TeV within the Standard Model at next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling including the mixed QCD-weak corrections and for the transverse top-quark polarization and the $t{\bar t}$ charge asymmetry also the mixed QCD-QED corrections. In addition we analyze and compute the effects of new interactions on these observables in terms of a gauge-invariant effective Lagrangian which contains all operators relevant for hadronic $t{\bar t}$ production up to mass dimension six.Comment: Latex, 35 pages, sevaral comments and 2 tables added, version to be published in JHE

Weak interaction corrections to hadronic top quark pair production: contributions from quark-gluon and bbˉb \bar b induced reactions

As an addendum to our previous evaluation of the weak-interaction corrections to hadronic top-quark pair production we determine the leading weak-interaction contributions due to the subprocesses $b {\bar b} \to t {\bar t}$ and $g q ({\bar q}) \to t {\bar t} q ({\bar q})$. For several distributions in $t {\bar t}$ production at the LHC we find that these contributions are non-negligible as compared to the weak corrections from the other partonic subprocesses.Comment: Latex, 9 pages, 4 figure

Differential decay rates of CP-even and CP-odd Higgs bosons to top and bottom quarks at NNLO QCD

We consider the decay of a neutral Higgs boson of arbitrary CP nature to a massive quark antiquark pair at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. Our analysis is made at the differential level using the antenna subtraction framework. We apply our general set-up to the decays of a CP-even and CP-odd heavy Higgs boson to a top-quark top-antiquark pair and to the decay of the 125 GeV Higgs boson to a massive bottom-quark bottom-antiquark pair. In the latter case we calculate, in particular, the two-jet, three-jet, and four-jet decay rates and, for two-jet events, the energy distribution of the leading jet.Comment: Latex, 23 pages, a reference adde

Lepton Number Violation and W' Chiral Couplings at the LHC

We study the observability for a heavy Majorana neutrino N along with a new charged gauge boson W' at the LHC. We emphasize the complementarity of these two particles in their production and decay to unambiguously determine their properties. We show that the Majorana nature of N can be verified by the lepton-number violating like-sign dilepton process, and by polar and azimuthal angular distributions. The chirality of the W' coupling to leptons and to quarks can be determined by a polar angle distribution in the reconstructed frame and an azimuthal angle distribution.Comment: 44 pages, 17 Figures; v2 journal versio

Cancellation of divergences in unitary gauge calculation of H→γγH \to \gamma \gamma process via one W loop, and application

Following the thread of R. Gastmans, S. L. Wu and T. T. Wu, the calculation in the unitary gauge for the $H \to \gamma \gamma$ process via one W loop is repeated, without the specific choice of the independent integrated loop momentum at the beginning. We start from the 'original' definition of each Feynman diagram, and show that the 4-momentum conservation and the Ward identity of the W-W-photon vertex can guarantee the cancellation of all terms among the Feynman diagrams which are to be integrated to give divergences higher than logarithmic. The remaining terms are to the most logarithmically divergent, hence is independent from the set of integrated loop momentum. This way of doing calculation is applied to $H \to \gamma Z$ process via one W loop in the unitary gauge, the divergences proportional to $M_Z^2/M^3$ including quadratic ones are all cancelled, and terms proportional to $M_Z^2/M^3$ are shown to be zero. The way of dealing with the quadratic divergences proportional to $M_Z^2/M^3$ in $H \to \gamma Z$ has subtle implication on the employment on the Feynman rules especially when those rules can lead to high level divergences. So calculation without integration on all the $\delta$ functions until have to is a more proper or maybe necessary way of the employment of the Feynman rules.Comment: 1 figure, 34 pages (updated