paper

Observation of a pseudoscalar excess at the top quark pair production threshold

arXiv:2503.22382 · doi:10.1088/1361-6633/adf7d3

Abstract

A search for resonances in top quark pair () production in final states with two charged leptons and multiple jets is presented, based on proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC at = 13 TeV, corresponding to 138 fb. The analysis explores the invariant mass of the system and two angular observables that provide direct access to the correlation of top quark and antiquark spins. A significant excess of events is observed near the kinematic threshold compared to the nonresonant production predicted by fixed-order perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD). The observed enhancement is consistent with the production of a color-singlet pseudoscalar (S) quasi-bound toponium state, as predicted by nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics. Using a simplified model for S toponium, the cross section of the excess above the pQCD prediction is measured to be 8.8 pb.

Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at http://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/TOP-24-007 (CMS Public Pages)

References in corpus (25)

Cited by in corpus (18)

Observation of a pseudoscalar excess at the top quark pair production threshold · wovepaper