Studies of the production of top quarks in the forward region at the LHC are potentially of great interest in terms of new physics. Not only does the process have an enhanced sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model (owing to sizable contributions from quark–antiquark and gluon–quark scattering), but measurements of the forward production of top-quark pairs (tt) can be used to constrain the gluon parton distribution function (PDF) at large momentum fraction. Reducing the uncertainty on this PDF will increase the precision of many Standard Model predictions, especially those that serve as backgrounds to searches for new high-mass particles.
Top quarks decay almost exclusively to a W boson and a b-quark jet. The LHCb collaboration has already made high-precision measurements of W-boson production, and recently demonstrated the ability to identify, or tag, jets originating from b and c quarks (LHCb 2015a). Now, the collaboration had combined these two abilities in a study of W-boson production in association with b and c jets (LHCb 2015b), using a subset of these data samples to observe top-quark production for the first time in the forward region (LHCb 2015c). The data show a large excess of events compared with the Standard Model’s W+b-jet prediction in the absence of top-quark production (see figure).
LHCb measured the top-quark production cross-sections in a reduced fiducial region chosen to enhance the relative top-quark content of the W+b-jet final state. Within this region, the inclusive top-quark production cross-sections, which include contributions from both tt and single-top production, are σ(top) [7 TeV] = 239±53(stat.)±38(syst.) fb and σ(top) [8 TeV] = 289±43(stat.)±46(syst.) fb. These values are in agreement with the Standard Model predictions of 180+51–41 (312+83–68) fb at 7(8) TeV obtained at next-to-leading order using MCFM, the Monte Carlo programme for femtobarn processes.
In the LHC’s Run 2, the higher beam energy should lead to a greatly increased cross-section and acceptance for top-quark production. This will allow LHCb to measure precisely both tt and single-top production, and so provide important constraints on the gluon PDF as well as potential signs for physics beyond the Standard Model.
