The Phenomenology of Single Top Quark Production at the Fermilab Tevatron

Abstract

Single top quark production at the Fermilab Tevatron Run II (a p \bar{p} collider with \sqrt{S} = 2 TeV) proceeds dominantly via two sub-processes, a t-channel W-gluon fusion process, and an s-channel W^* process. We show that these two sub-processes have different sensitivities to new physics effects in the top quark's electro-weak interactions. The W^* process is sensitive to new heavy charged resonances, such as a W' boson, while the W-gluon fusion process is more sensitive to modifications to the top's interaction, including flavor-changing neutral currents involving the top quark. We examine the implications of these results on our ability to measure V_{tb} with confidence, and propose a quantity R = \sigma_{Wg} / \sigma_{W^*}, which may be studied in order to characterize the confidence one may place upon a given measurement of V_{tb} from single top production.