Probing New Physics from the Single-Top Production

TL;DR

This paper explores how single-top quark production rates can reveal new physics affecting top quark interactions, enabling measurements of its decay width and lifetime.

Contribution

It demonstrates the sensitivity of single-top production to new physics and proposes using this to measure the top quark's decay width and lifetime.

Findings

Single-top production rate is sensitive to new physics.

Measurement of production rate informs top quark decay width.

Combined with branching ratio, it determines the top quark lifetime.

Abstract

We show that the production rate of the single-top quark event from the $W$-gluon fusion process is sensitive to new physics which strongly modifies the interactions of the top quark. The measurement of its production rate gives the partial decay width of the top quark which combined with the branching ratio measurement from the $t \bar t$ pair event determines the lifetime of the top quark.