Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the single top quark production via model-independent t-q-g flavor-changing neutral-current couplings at hadron colliders

TL;DR

This paper calculates the complete next-to-leading order QCD effects on single top production via model-independent t-q-g FCNC couplings at hadron colliders, showing significant cross section enhancements and reduced theoretical uncertainties.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive NLO QCD correction calculations for single top production via FCNC couplings, improving theoretical precision and experimental sensitivity.

Findings

NLO corrections increase cross sections by 60% and 30% for tcg at Tevatron and LHC.

NLO corrections enhance sensitivity to FCNC couplings by 10-30%.

NLO effects reduce scale dependence, increasing confidence in predictions.

Abstract

We present the calculations of the complete next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD effects on the single top productions induced by model-independent $tqg$ flavor-changing neutral-current couplings at hadron colliders. Our results show that, for the $tcg$ coupling the NLO QCD corrections can enhance the total cross sections by about 60% and 30%, and for the $tug$ coupling by about 50% and 20% at the Tevatron and LHC, respectively, which means that the NLO corrections can increase the experimental sensitivity to the FCNC couplings by about 10%$-$30%. Moreover, the NLO corrections reduce the dependence of the total cross sections on the renormalization or factorization scale significantly, which lead to increased confidence on the theoretical predictions. Besides, we also evaluate the NLO corrections to several important kinematic distributions, and find that for most of them the NLO corrections are almost the same and do not change the shape of the distributions.