Top Polarization in Stop Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the polarization of top quarks produced from scalar top decays at the LHC, analyzing how polarization depends on stop and neutralino mixing, and its impact on decay kinematics and search strategies.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of top polarization effects in stop decays, highlighting how polarization influences decay observables and search strategies at the LHC.

Findings

Polarization depends on stop and neutralino mixing and mass differences.

Polarization effects influence the energy and momentum spectra of decay leptons.

Negatively polarized tops lead to softer decay spectra, affecting detection strategies.

Abstract

We survey the expected polarization of the top produced in the decay of a scalar top quark, $\tilde t \rightarrow {\tilde t}\chi_i^0, i =1-2$. The phenomenology is quite interesting, since the expected polarization depends both on the mixing in the stop and neutralino sectors and on the mass differences between the stop and the neutralino. We find that a mixed stop behaves almost like a right-handed stop due to the larger hypercharge that enters the stop/top/gaugino coupling and that these polarisation effects disappear, when $m_{\tilde t_1} \approx m_t+m_{\tilde\chi^0_i}$. After a discussion on the expected top polarization from the decay of a scalar top quark, we focus on the interplay of polarization and kinematics at the LHC. We discuss different probes of the top polarization in terms of lab-frame observables. We find that these observables faithfully reflect the polarization of the parent top-quark, but also have a non-trivial dependence on the kinematics of the stop production and decay process. In addition, we illustrate the effect of top polarization on the energy and transverse momentum of the decay lepton in the laboratory frame. Our results show that both spectra are softened substantially in case of a negatively polarized top, particularly for a large mass difference between the stop and the neutralino. Thus, the search strategies, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them, depends not just on the mass difference $m_{\tilde t} - m_{\tilde\chi_{i}^{0}}$ due to the usual kinematic effects but also on the effects of top polarization on the decay kinematics the extent of which depends in turn on the said mass difference.