R-parity violation and top quark polarization at the Fermilab Tevatron collider

TL;DR

This paper investigates how R-parity violating supersymmetric interactions can induce top quark polarization at the Fermilab Tevatron, providing a potential observable to detect new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

It demonstrates that top quark polarization can serve as a sensitive probe for R-parity violating interactions at hadron colliders, a novel approach in this context.

Findings

Top quark polarization can be significantly affected by R-parity violating interactions.

Polarization measurements can distinguish new physics signals from Standard Model background.

The polarization is predicted to be very small in the Standard Model, making deviations a clear indicator of new interactions.

Abstract

The lepton or baryon number violating top quark interactions in the supersymmetric standard model with R parity violation contribute to the process d dbar to t tbar at the tree level via the t- or u-channel sfermion exchange. Since these interactions are chiral, they induce polarization to the top quark in the t tbar events at hadron colliders. We show in this article that the polarization can be a useful observable for probing these interactions at the upgraded Fermilab Tevatron collider, because the polarization is expected to be very small in the standard model.