Improved Measurement of ttZ Couplings at the LHC

Abstract

We consider QCD tt~Z production at the LHC with Z->\bar\nu\nu and all-hadronic tt~ decays, i.e. pp -> p_T(miss)bb~+4 jets, as a tool to measure ttZ couplings. This channel has a significantly larger cross section than those where the Z boson decays leptonically. However, tt~, bb~+4 jet, tt~j and tt~jj production give rise to potentially large backgrounds. We show that these processes can be suppressed to an acceptable level with suitable cuts, and find that adding the p_T(miss)bb~+4 jet channel to the final states used in previous ttZ couplings analyses will improve the sensitivity by 10-60%. We also discuss how the measurement of the ttZ couplings may constrain Little Higgs models.Comment: revtex4, 16 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl