Bounding exotic top decays inclusively at the FCC-ee

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of the FCC-ee collider to measure rare and exotic top quark decays inclusively, leveraging the clean environment of electron-positron collisions to set model-independent limits.

Contribution

It introduces new strategies for inclusive measurement of exotic top decays at FCC-ee, enabling model-independent constraints on rare top decay branching fractions.

Findings

Proposes a method to measure exotic top decay excesses inclusively.

Establishes the potential for model-independent limits on top decay branching fractions.

Highlights the advantages of FCC-ee's clean environment for top quark studies.

Abstract

Since its discovery, the top quark has never been produced and studied in an environment as clean as that predicted for $e^+e^-$ collisions at future colliders. Details of the top quark's properties, completely unattainable in hadronic collisions, can be analyzed via lepton collisions. New strategies for analyzing the physics of the top quark can, therefore, be developed in such a spectacularly clean environment. Here we focus on the possibility of inclusively measuring exotic excesses in the top decay width by studying the direct production of $t\bar t$ at the FCC-$ee$, thus establishing model-independent limits for rare decays branching fractions of the top quark.