Top Quark Charge Asymmetry: Searching for Light Axigluons in top pair + jet Production at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to discover light axigluons, hypothetical particles, through top pair plus jet production at the LHC by analyzing asymmetries, with implications for current and future collider data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of top pair plus jet production to detect light axigluons and assesses their discovery prospects with existing and future LHC data.

Findings

Light axigluons with large couplings can be discovered with a few inverse femtobarns of data.

Almost all parameter space can be probed with 2011/2012 LHC data.

Charge asymmetry can reveal axigluons with small couplings using 65 inverse femtobarns at 14 TeV.

Abstract

We investigate the discovery potential of light color-octet bosons in the mass range of 100 - 400 GeV in exclusive top-pair plus jet production at the LHC. We study the impact of such bosons on the incline, the energy and the rapidity asymmetries. We show that light axigluons with large couplings to quarks can be discovered at the LHC with a luminosity of a few inverse fb. Almost all of the considered axigluon parameter space can be probed using the already available 2011/2012 LHC data. In a small-coupling scenario, axigluons could be discovered using the charge asymmetry with 65 inverse fb at the LHC and a center of mass energy of 14 TeV. We furthermore show that top pair+jet production could reveal the existence of scenarios where axigluons couple with a different strength to up- and down-type quarks.