Four top final states with NLO accuracy in perturbative QCD: 3 lepton channel

Abstract

Abstract We examine the effect of higher-order QCD corrections on the four top-quark production cross section in the 3 lepton decay channel. Top-quark and W gauge-boson decays are included at next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD. The narrow-width approximation, that preserves spin correlations, is used to perform the calculation for this complex 2 → 12 (13) process. We present differential cross-section distributions of top-quark decay products for the LHC Run III energy of s $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 13.6 TeV, using realistic selection cuts. Our results show that QCD corrections and jet radiation in top-quark and W decays can lead to significant changes in shapes of basic kinematic distributions and, therefore, need to be included for the accurate description of pp → t t ¯ t t ¯ $$ t\overline{t}t\overline{t} $$ + X process in the 3ℓ decay channel. The NLO QCD results obtained in this work are important in the context of the recent observation of the pp → t t ¯ t t ¯ $$ t\overline{t}t\overline{t} $$ + X process by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations and are of great significance for the High-Luminosity phase of the LHC.

Keywords

• Higher-Order Perturbative Calculations
• Specific QCD Phenomenology
• Top Quark