Measuring Polarized Gluon Distributions by Heavy Quark Spin Correlations and Polarizations

TL;DR

This paper explores how heavy quark spin correlations and polarizations at the LHC can reveal polarized gluon distributions, providing insights into gluon spin structure and potential new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

It introduces a method to measure polarized gluon distributions through heavy quark spin correlations and polarizations in top quark pair production at the LHC.

Findings

Spin correlations encode gluon polarization information.

Decay distributions can be used to extract gluon spin data.

Implications for detecting physics beyond the Standard Model.

Abstract

The production of heavy flavor quark pairs, including top-anti-top, at the LHC proceeds primarily through gluon fusion. The correlation between the gluon spins affects various spin correlations between the produced quark and anti-quark. Both single spin asymmetries and double correlations of the quark pair spins will be manifest in the subsequent hadronization and decay distributions. For top pairs this is most pronounced. Dilepton, single lepton, and purely hadronic top pair decay channels allow for the extraction of gluon spin information as well as providing a window into possible interactions Beyond the Standard Model. Spin related asymmetries and polarizations will be presented. The implications for experimental determination will be discussed.