Effect of spin-3/2 top quark excitation on ttbar production at the LHC

Abstract

A spin-3/2 top quark excitation originating in string realisations of the RS scenario has an effect on the production of top-antitop pairs in hadron-hadron collisions. We study the additional contribution of this state to the cross section for the LHC. We comment on the prospect of discovery or exclusion for a range of masses and couplings at both 7 and 14 TeV and show that the reach extends significantly with increasing centre-of-mass energy. Results are compared with the effect of a hypothetical spin-1/2 excited top as well as other BSM scenarios which predict the presence of higher dimension effective operators. We also calculate distributions for several observables which can be used to distinguish between the different scenarios in the presence of a deviation from the SM prediction for the ttbar cross section.