Investigating the Single Production of Vector-Like Quarks Decaying into Top Quark and W Boson through Hadronic Channels at the HL-LHC

TL;DR

This study explores the potential to detect heavy vector-like quarks decaying into top quarks and W bosons at the HL-LHC, using advanced jet tagging techniques to analyze high-mass scenarios and estimate exclusion limits.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of single production modes of vector-like quarks decaying hadronically at the HL-LHC, including mass and width parameter scans, with projected exclusion limits.

Findings

Vector-like quarks up to 2491 GeV can be excluded.

Analysis covers widths of 0.1 and 0.01 of the mass.

Uses jet tagging techniques for hadronic decay channels.

Abstract

We investigate the single production of vector-like quarks at the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). With the assumed (enhanced) couplings to third generation quarks of the standard model, vector-like quarks $B/X$ are produced in association with a bottom ($b$) or top ($t$) quark, which correspond to $Bbq$ and $Btq/Xtq$ production modes, including an additional soft forward jet from the spectator quark ($q$). This study focuses on high-mass vector-like quarks $B/X$ decaying into a top quark and a $W$ boson, resulting in the final state jets emerging from hadronically decaying top quark ($t\to Wb$) and $W$ boson ($W\to q\bar{q}'$). The events with $W$ boson and $t$ quark have been analysed using tagging techniques for large-radius jets. The scan ranges of the mass ($1000<m_{B/X}<3000$ GeV) for the relative width $\Gamma_{B/X}/m_{B/X}=0.1$ and $\Gamma_{B/X}/m_{B/X}=0.01$ of vector-like $B/X$ quarks have been investigated. From the results of the analysis, the masses of vector like quarks $B$($X$) up to $2491$ ($2364$) GeV and $2018$ ($1873$) GeV can be excluded corresponding to these relative width cases at $95\%$ CL depending on the type and branching scenarios at integrated luminosity projection of $3$ ab$^{-1}$ at the HL-LHC.