Electroweak Top Quark Production at the Fermilab Tevatron

Abstract

Top quarks can be produced from the electroweak Wtb coupling, leading to a single top or antitop in the final state. We examine single top quark production at the Fermilab Tevatron and calculate the cross section as a function of top quark mass, for each of three separate production processes. We give details of the interferences between Feynman diagrams in W-gluon fusion and then study the effects of an anomalous (V+A) term in the Wtb coupling. Using predictions for the next Tevatron run, we estimate the experimental sensitivity to the CKM matrix element V_tb as a function of the strength of the anomalous coupling.

Comments: 6 pages including 5 figures as a uuencoded postscript file. New posting is to fix postscript compression problems