CPF Seminar

Elizabeth Brost, University of Oregon

"Searching for the Flavor-Changing Neutral Current with Top Quarks at the LHC"

4:00pm, RLM 9.222

Abstract: The flavor-changing neutral current is forbidden at tree level in the Standard Model, and suppressed at higher order due to the GIM mechanism. In the Standard Model, the top quark is expected to decay to a W boson and a bottom quark nearly 100 percent of the time. While the Standard Model branching fractions for flavor-changing neutral currents in top decays are well beyond current experimental reach, there exist theoretical models which predict large enhancements to those branching fractions.   Observation of the flavor-changing neutral current in top decays would be an unambiguous confirmation of new physics, but even in absence of an observation, we can set limits that constrain models of new physics beyond the Standard Model.