Probing New Top Physics at the LHCb Experiment

We suggest that top quark physics can be studied at the LHCb experiment and that top quark production could be observed. Since LHCb covers a large pseudorapidity region in the forward direction, it has unique abilities to probe new physics in the top quark sector. Furthermore, we demonstrate that LHCb may be able to measure a $t\overline{t}$ production rate asymmetry and, thus, indirectly probe an anomalous forward-backward $t\overline{t}$ asymmetry in the forward region, a possibility suggested by the enhanced forward-backward asymmetry reported by the CDF experiment.

Figure 1

The $t\overline{t}$ signal and background distributions as a function of the invariant mass of the candidate $b$ and muon $m_{b\mu }$; see the text for details. The curves from top to bottom (at $m_{b\mu }=100\mathrm{GeV}$) are for $t\overline{t}$, $Wj$, single top quark, $Wb$, $bb$, and $jj$.

Figure 2

The signal and background top quark top antiquark cross section differences (upper panel) and individual rate asymmetries (lower panel), as functions of ${\eta }_{\mu }$. See the text for details.