Top quark forward-backward asymmetry and W^prime bosons

Abstract

The top quark forward-backward asymmetry measured at the Fermilab Tevatron collider deviates from the standard model prediction. A W^prime boson model is described, where the coupling W^prime-t-d is fixed by the tt_bar forward-backward asymmetry and total cross section at the Tevatron. We show that such a W^prime boson would be produced in association with a top quark at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), thus inducing additional tt_bar+j events. We use measurements of tt_bar+n-jet production from the LHC to constrain the allowed W^prime-t-d couplings as a function of W^prime boson mass. We find that this W^prime model is constrained at the 95% C.L. using 0.7 fb^{-1} of data from the LHC, and could be fully excluded with 5 fb^{-1} of data.