Top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron: the electroweak contribution

Abstract

Recent CDF and D0 measurements of the top quark forward-backward asymmetry at the Tevatron present deviations between 1-sigma and 2-sigma from QCD predictions and a cut M_inv > 450 GeV on the events increases this deviation to 3.4 sigma in the CDF measurement. The inclusion of electroweak contributions of order alpha^2 and order alpha alphas^2 enlarges the theoretical prediction from QCD by a factor ~ 1.2 and diminishes the observed deviations. The calculation method is shortly discussed and numerical results are compared to the experimental data.

Comments: 8 pages, 4 figures. Talk given at Corfu Summer Institute 2011 School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity, September 4-18, 2011, Corfu, Greece