Top compositeness at the Tevatron and LHC

Abstract

We explore the possibility that the right-handed top quark is composite. We examine the consequences that compositeness would have on t production at the Tevatron, and derive a weak constraint on the scale of compositeness of order a few hundred GeV from the t inclusive cross section. More detailed studies of differential properties of t production could potentially improve this limit. We find that a composite top can result in an enhancement of the tt production rate at the LHC (of as much as 10 3 compared to the Standatd Model four top rate). We explore observables which allow us to extract the four top rate from the backgrounds, and show that the LHC can either discover or constrain top compositeness for wide ranges of parameter space.