Top quark physics prospects with 10 fb^{-1} at 7 TeV

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential for top quark physics research at the LHC with 10 fb^{-1} of data at 7 TeV, highlighting improvements, challenges, and new opportunities enabled by increased statistics.

Contribution

It provides a personal perspective on future top quark analyses at the LHC, emphasizing systematic uncertainties and new studies made possible by larger datasets.

Findings

Identification of key systematic uncertainties limiting analyses

Proposals for new studies enabled by increased data

Strategies for improving top quark measurements

Abstract

This paper presents a personal point of view on the prospects open for top quark physics analyses at the LHC with 10 fb$^{-1}$ of pp collisions at 7 TeV. We discuss the main directions for improvement for the analyses presented at TOP2011 when moving to a regime where systematic uncertainties are the limiting factors, and suggest some new studies that become possible for the first time thanks to the larger statistics.