Measurements of top quark spin observables in tt events using dilepton final states in √s = 8 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

Abstract

Measurements of top quark spin observables in tt events are presented based on 20.2 fb−1 of √s = 8 TeV proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The analysis is performed in the dilepton final state, characterised by the presence of two isolated leptons (electrons or muons). There are 15 observables, each sensitive to a different coefficient of the spin density matrix of tt production, which are measured independently. Ten of these observables are measured for the first time. All of them are corrected for detector resolution and acceptance effects back to the parton and stable-particle levels. The measured values of the observables at parton level are compared to Standard Model predictions at next-to-leading order in QCD. The corrected distributions at stable-particle level are presented and the means of the distributions are compared to Monte Carlo predictions. No significant deviation from the Standard Model is observed for any observable.