Single Top Quark at Future Hadron Colliders. Complete Signal and Background Study

Abstract

We perform a detail theoretical study including decays and jet fragmentation of all the important modes of the single top quark production and all basic background processes at the upgraded Tevatron and LHC colliders. Special attention was paid to the complete tree level calculation of the QCD fake background which was not considered in the previous studies. Analysis of the various kinematical distributions for the signal and backgrounds allowed to work out a set of cuts for an efficient background suppression and extraction of the signal. It was shown that the signal to background ratio after optimized cuts could reach about 0.4 at the Tevatron and 1 at the LHC. The remaining after cuts rate of the signal at the LHC for the $lepton+jets $ signature is expected to be about 6.1 pb and will be enough to study the single top physics even during the LHC operation at a low luminosity.