Single top quark production at the LHC

TL;DR

This review discusses the precision measurements and searches involving single top quark production at the LHC, highlighting its role in testing electroweak interactions and probing new physics through rare decay channels.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the current status, experimental techniques, and future prospects of single top quark studies at the LHC, emphasizing precision tests and new physics searches.

Findings

Angular distributions test electroweak theory

Searches for t+X final states probe new physics

Future measurements will determine Yukawa coupling sign

Abstract

This paper is an experimental review of the study of processes with a single top quark at the LHC. The pioneering times are over, and this is now a sector of "precision physics" at colliders. Angular distributions of the decay products of singly-produced top quarks are unique tests of the electroweak interaction. Searches for rare final states of the form t+X (where X=$\gamma$, Z, H) are very sensitive to new physics, and will enter with Run II in a very interesting zone of the parameter space of some theories. The relative sign of the Yukawa coupling of the top quark with respect to the Higgs coupling to gauge bosons will be conclusively measured very soon in the tHq final state.