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Spin Effects in Processes of Single Top Quark Production at Hadron Colliders

E. E. Boos, A. V. Sherstnev

hep-pharXiv:hep-ph/0201271

Abstract

We investigate spin properties of single top quark production at hadron colliders. Based on an analogy with single top production and polarized top quark decay, we reproduce in a simple way the results by G.Mahlon and S.Parke on the existence of preferred axes for the decomposition of the top quark spin. For the W*- and W-g fusion production modes these axes are related to the down-type quark momentum. The proposed method allows finding kinematical conditions for the observation of top quark polarization in a third process that contributes to single top production and is important at LHC energies, the tW-process, in which spin effects are smeared out by the contribution of diagrams with a QCD gtt-vertex. A simple Monte-Carlo analysis of spin correlations for the tW-process with subsequent top decay is given as an illustration.

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