The electroweak contribution to the top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron

Abstract

The electroweak contributions to the forward-backward asymmetry in the production of top-quark pairs at the Tevatron are evaluated at O(alpha^2) and O(alpha*alphas^2). We perform a detailed analysis of all partonic channels that produce an asymmetry and combine them with the QCD contributions. They provide a non-negligible fraction of the QCD-induced asymmetry with the same overall sign, thus enlarging the Standard Model prediction and diminishing the observed deviation. For the observed mass-dependent forward-backward asymmetry a 3-sigma deviation still remains at an invariant-mass cut of M_(t-tbar) > 450 GeV.