Baryon number violation at the LHC: the top option

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to observe baryon number violation through top-quark processes at the LHC using an effective operator approach, highlighting the collider's sensitivity to such rare phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a model-independent analysis of baryon-number-violating operators involving top quarks and estimates their detectability at current and future LHC runs.

Findings

Effective coefficients can be probed with 1 fb^-1 at 7 TeV

Constraints improve with higher luminosity and energy

Potential to observe baryon number violation at the LHC

Abstract

Subject to strong experimental constraints at low energies, baryon number violation is nonetheless well motivated from a theoretical point of view. We examine the possibility of observing baryon-number-violating top-quark production or decay at hadron colliders. We adopt a model independent effective approach and focus on operators with minimal mass-dimension. Corresponding effective coefficients could be directly probed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) already with an integrated luminosity of 1 inverse femtobarn at 7 TeV, and further constrained with 30 (100) inverse femtobarns at 7 (14) TeV.