Abstract
This letter documents a search for flavour-changing neutral currents (FCNCs), which are strongly suppressed in the Standard Model, in events with a photon and a top quark with the ATLAS detector. The analysis uses data collected in pp collisions at s=13 TeV during Run 2 of the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Both FCNC top-quark production and decay are considered. The final state consists of a charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, a b-tagged jet, one high-momentum photon and possibly additional jets. A multiclass deep neural network is used to classify events either as signal in one of the two categories, FCNC production or decay, or as background. No significant excess of events over the background prediction is observed and 95% CL upper limits are placed on the strength of left- and right-handed FCNC interactions. The 95% CL bounds on the branching fractions for the FCNC top-quark decays, estimated (expected) from both top-quark production and decay, are B(t→uγ)<0.85(0.88−0.25 +0.37)×10−5 and B(t→cγ)<4.2(3.40−0.95 +1.35)×10−5 for a left-handed tqγ coupling, and B(t→uγ)<1.2(1.20−0.33 +0.50)×10−5 and B(t→cγ)<4.5(3.70−1.03 +1.47)×10−5 for a right-handed coupling.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 137379 |
Journal | Physics Letters B |
Volume | 842 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 10 2023 |
Funding
We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT , Argentina; YerPhI , Armenia; ARC , Australia; BMWFW and FWF , Austria; ANAS , Azerbaijan; CNPq and FAPESP , Brazil; NSERC , NRC and CFI , Canada; CERN ; ANID , Chile; CAS , MOST and NSFC , China; Minciencias , Colombia; MEYS CR , Czech Republic; DNRF and DNSRC , Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS and CEA-DRF/IRFU , France; SRNSFG , Georgia; BMBF , HGF and MPG , Germany; GSRI , Greece; RGC and Hong Kong SAR , China; ISF and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN , Italy; MEXT and JSPS , Japan; CNRST , Morocco; NWO , Netherlands; RCN , Norway; MEiN , Poland; FCT , Portugal; MNE/IFA , Romania; MESTD , Serbia; MSSR , Slovakia; ARRS and MIZŠ , Slovenia; DSI/NRF , South Africa; MICINN , Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation , Sweden; SERI , SNSF and Canton of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; MOST , Taiwan; TENMAK , Türkiye; STFC , United Kingdom; DOE and NSF , United States of America. In addition, individual groups and members have received support from BCKDF , Canarie , Compute Canada and CRC , Canada; PRIMUS 21/SCI/017 and UNCE SCI/013 , Czech Republic; COST , ERC , ERDF , Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions , European Union; Investissements d'Avenir Labex , Investissements d'Avenir Idex and ANR , France; DFG and AvH Foundation, Germany; Herakleitos , Thales and Aristeia programmes co-financed by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF , Greece; BSF-NSF and MINERVA , Israel; Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 , Norway; NCN and NAWA , Poland; La Caixa Banking Foundation , CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya and PROMETEO and GenT Programmes Generalitat Valenciana , Spain; Göran Gustafssons Stiftelser , Sweden; The Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust , United Kingdom. We thank CERN for the very successful operation of the LHC, as well as the support staff from our institutions without whom ATLAS could not be operated efficiently. We acknowledge the support of ANPCyT, Argentina; YerPhI, Armenia; ARC, Australia; BMWFW and FWF, Austria; ANAS, Azerbaijan; CNPq and FAPESP, Brazil; NSERC, NRC and CFI, Canada; CERN; ANID, Chile; CAS, MOST and NSFC, China; Minciencias, Colombia; MEYS CR, Czech Republic; DNRF and DNSRC, Denmark; IN2P3-CNRS and CEA-DRF/IRFU, France; SRNSFG, Georgia; BMBF, HGF and MPG, Germany; GSRI, Greece; RGC and Hong Kong SAR, China; ISF and Benoziyo Center, Israel; INFN, Italy; MEXT and JSPS, Japan; CNRST, Morocco; NWO, Netherlands; RCN, Norway; MEiN, Poland; FCT, Portugal; MNE/IFA, Romania; MESTD, Serbia; MSSR, Slovakia; ARRS and MIZŠ, Slovenia; DSI/NRF, South Africa; MICINN, Spain; SRC and Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden; SERI, SNSF and Canton of Bern and Geneva, Switzerland; MOST, Taiwan; TENMAK, Türkiye; STFC, United Kingdom; DOE and NSF, United States of America. In addition, individual groups and members have received support from BCKDF, Canarie, Compute Canada and CRC, Canada; PRIMUS 21/SCI/017 and UNCE SCI/013, Czech Republic; COST, ERC, ERDF, Horizon 2020 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, European Union; Investissements d'Avenir Labex, Investissements d'Avenir Idex and ANR, France; DFG and AvH Foundation, Germany; Herakleitos, Thales and Aristeia programmes co-financed by EU-ESF and the Greek NSRF, Greece; BSF-NSF and MINERVA, Israel; Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021, Norway; NCN and NAWA, Poland; La Caixa Banking Foundation, CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya and PROMETEO and GenT Programmes Generalitat Valenciana, Spain; Göran Gustafssons Stiftelser, Sweden; The Royal Society and Leverhulme Trust, United Kingdom. The crucial computing support from all WLCG partners is acknowledged gratefully, in particular from CERN, the ATLAS Tier-1 facilities at TRIUMF (Canada), NDGF (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), CC-IN2P3 (France), KIT/GridKA (Germany), INFN-CNAF (Italy), NL-T1 (Netherlands), PIC (Spain), ASGC (Taiwan), RAL (UK) and BNL (USA), the Tier-2 facilities worldwide and large non-WLCG resource providers. Major contributors of computing resources are listed in Ref. [109].