English

Enhancing the sensitivity to New Physics in the top-antitop invariant mass distribution

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2013-05-30 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

We propose selection cuts on the LHC top-antitop production sample which should enhance the sensitivity to New Physics signals in the study of the top-antitop invariant mass distribution. We show that selecting events in which the top-antitop object has little transverse and large longitudinal momentum enlarges the quark-fusion fraction of the sample and therefore increases its sensitivity to New Physics which couples to quarks and not to gluons. We find that systematic error bars play a fundamental role and assume a simple model for them. We check how a non-visible new particle would become visible after the selection cuts enhance its resonance bump. A final realistic analysis should be done by the experimental groups with a correct evaluation of the systematic error bars.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1205.5267,
  title  = {Enhancing the sensitivity to New Physics in the top-antitop invariant mass distribution},
  author = {Ezequiel Alvarez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1205.5267},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

9 pages, 2 figures. Typo in numbers of Fig. 1 corrected, references added and minor changes to agree with PRD published version