Stringent limits on top-quark compositeness from top anti-top production at the Tevatron and the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates how potential top-quark compositeness affects top-antitop production rates at colliders, deriving limits on new physics scales from current experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces effective operators modifying top-gluon interactions and derives the first stringent collider-based limits on top-quark compositeness.

Findings

Current measurements constrain the compositeness scale to be very high.

Limits are comparable to those from light quark studies and electroweak precision tests.

Results can restrict parameter space in composite Higgs models.

Abstract

If the top quark is a composite state made out of some constituents, its interaction with the gluon will be modified. We introduce the leading effective operators that contribute to the radius and anomalous magnetic moment of the top quark and study their effect on the cross section for top anti-top production at the Tevatron and the LHC. Current measurements of the cross sections set a stringent limit on the scale of compositeness. This limit is comparable to similar limits obtained for light quarks and those from electroweak precision measurements. It can be used to constrain the parameter space of some composite Higgs models.