A search for single top-quark production via flavour-changing neutral current processes from gluon plus up- or charm-quark initial states in proton–proton collisions at the LHC is presented. Data collected with the ATLAS detector in 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb (Formula presented.) are used. Candidate events for a top quark decaying into a lepton, a neutrino and a jet are selected and classified into signal- and background-like candidates using a neural network. No signal is observed and an upper limit on the production cross-section multiplied by the (Formula presented.) branching fraction is set. The observed 95 % CL limit is (Formula presented.) and the expected 95 % CL limit is (Formula presented.). The observed limit can be interpreted as upper limits on the coupling constants of the flavour-changing neutral current interactions divided by the scale of new physics (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) and on the branching fractions (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.).

Aad, G., Abbott, B., Abdallah, J., Abdinov, O., Aben, R., Abolins, M., et al. (2016). Search for single top-quark production via flavour-changing neutral currents at 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector. THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL. C, PARTICLES AND FIELDS, 76(2), 1-30 [10.1140/epjc/s10052-016-3876-4].

Search for single top-quark production via flavour-changing neutral currents at 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

F. Ceradini;B. Di Micco;R. Di Nardo;D. Orestano;F. Petrucci;D. Puddu;