After two online editions during the Covid pandemic, this year the annual TOP conference returned to an in-person format. The 2022 edition took place in the historic city of Durham in the UK from 4 to 9 September and attracted more than 100 participants.
The LHC collaborations that study the top quark presented a wealth of recent results based on Run 2 data, many of which were shown for the first time, and even included a measurement with the very first data collected in Run 3. CMS and ATLAS presented new top-quark mass results, new measurements of top-quark production asymmetries, new cross-section measurements as well as searches for new production and decay modes, both within and beyond the Standard Model (SM). These included ttW and four top-quark production, and processes involving flavour-changing-neutral-current interactions that could produce sizable rates beyond the SM prediction.
Earlier this year, CMS released a preliminary mass measurement that profiles all uncertainties, including a finely split set of signal-modelling uncertainties based on variations of Monte Carlo generators. To account for the limited statistical power for some of these variations, this precision analysis implements a fully consistent treatment of the resulting fluctuations leading to a 380 MeV uncertainty. ATLAS presented a top-quark mass measurement of 172.63 ± 0.20 (stat) ± 0.67 (syst) ± 0.37 (recoil) GeV. The last uncertainty represents the ambiguity in assigning the recoil of gluon emissions in the top-quark decay chain that was neither considered in Run 1 analyses nor in the CMS measurement and requires further studies. The large difference in the modelling uncertainties assigned by both collaborations underlines the importance to overcome the limitations of Monte Carlo generators for these precision measurements.
Run 2 of the LHC opens up new production processes that could not be probed at the Tevatron or in Run 1. Recently, ATLAS announced the observation of the rare production process of a single top quark and a photon, thus completing the list of associated top-quark production processes with SM gauge bosons. CMS followed with a brand-new analysis of the four top-quark production process, the rarest process accessible by the LHC to date. Together with combined ATLAS analyses, there is now very strong evidence that this elusive process exists. While most results in the classical top-quark pair and single-top production modes agree very well with the SM predictions, slight excesses are seen in several rare production modes, such as ttW and four-top production. None of these excesses are statistically significant, but they form an interesting pattern that requires experimental results and theory predictions to be considered extra carefully, while keeping an eye open for more exotic explanations.
Theory ahead
Theory contributions at TOP 2022 revolved around two major themes: precision calculations and beyond-SM models. For the former, several groups presented new calculations that enable a more precise comparison of measurements with SM predictions. These calculations provide an integrated treatment of the top-quark and boson decays, including off-shell effects, which are small in the total cross section, but which can be significantly enhanced locally in some corners of phase space. Including these effects is therefore relevant for the highest-precision differential measurements at the LHC. For the second theme, the most popular approach is to expand around the SM with minimal model dependence using effective field theory. This is complemented by more focussed efforts in concrete new-physics scenarios, including composite Higgs (and top) models as well as leptoquarks. A dedicated theory mini-workshop discussed the interplay of top-quark measurements with results in flavour physics.
Perhaps the most exciting result, the first at Run 3, was presented by CMS. On 5 July, just two months before the conference, the LHC switched back on after a three-year shutdown and started to produce the first proton-proton collisions at a record centre-of-mass energy of 13.6 TeV. Stretching over the next few years, Run 3 will increase the size of available datasets involving top quarks by a factor of three to four. Both ATLAS and CMS made a tremendous effort to prepare the detectors, to collect and check the quality of the data, and to provide preliminary calibrations for leptons and jets. In a race against the clock, CMS isolated the top-quark pair production process in the data collected in July and August in time for the conference. Even at this very early stage, the data are understood well enough that a cross-section measurement with a total uncertainty below 8% was possible by making use of the top-quark events themselves to calibrate most of the relevant experimental uncertainties in situ.
With these first results showing that the LHC and the experiments are smoothly operating, TOP22 kicks off the Run 3 top-quark physics programme. We can look back on a very exciting edition of the TOP conference and look forward to meeting again in Michigan in 2023.
