Probing the flavor of the top quark decay

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods to measure the top quark's flavor decay properties, introduces a new approach to determine the heavy flavor content, and discusses future prospects at the LHC with simulation studies.

Contribution

It presents a novel simple method to probe the heavy flavor fraction in top quark decays and revises existing experimental techniques for measuring $V_{tb}$.

Findings

The proposed method can effectively measure the heavy flavor content in top decays.

Simulations indicate promising prospects for future LHC measurements.

Current $V_{tb}$ measurements are consistent with the Standard Model but limited by uncertainties.

Abstract

The top quark sector is almost decoupled from lighter quark generations due to the fact that $V_{tb}\approx$~1. The current experimental measurements of $V_{tb}$ are compatible with the Standard Model expectations but are still dominated by experimental uncertainties. In this manuscript, a revision of the experimental methods used to measure $V_{tb}$ is given, and a simple method to probe heavy flavor content fraction of top quark events, $R=B(t\rightarrow Wb)/B(t\rightarrow Wq)$, is presented and discussed. Prospects for the measurements at the Large Hadron Collider based on generator level simulations are outlined.