Threshold production of unstable top

TL;DR

This paper introduces a systematic effective field theory approach to accurately describe the finite lifetime effects in top quark-antiquark pair production near threshold, resolving divergences and computing higher-order nonresonant contributions.

Contribution

It develops a novel nonrelativistic effective field theory incorporating a new scale for top decay, enabling precise calculations of nonresonant effects at higher orders.

Findings

Computed next-to-leading nonresonant contributions to the total cross section.

Extended analysis to next-to-next-to-leading order in alpha_s.

Derived the dominant nonresonant contribution in hadronic collisions.

Abstract

We develop a systematic approach to describe the finite lifetime effects in the threshold production of top quark-antiquark pairs. It is based on the nonrelativistic effective field theory with an additional scale rho^(1/2) m_t characterizing the dynamics of the top-quark decay, which involves a new expansion parameter rho=1-m_W/m_t. Our method naturally resolves the problem of spurious divergences in the analysis of the unstable top production. Within this framework we compute the next-to-leading nonresonant contribution to the total cross section of the top quark-antiquark threshold production in electron-positron annihilation through high-order expansion in rho and confirm the recently obtained result. We extend the analysis to the next-to-next-to-leading O(alpha_s) nonresonant contribution which is derived in the leading order in rho. The dominant nonresonant contribution to the top-antitop threshold production in hadronic collisions is also obtained.