Measurement of the W boson polarisation in tt¯ events from pp collisions at s√ = 8 TeV in the lepton+jets channel with ATLAS

Abstract

This paper presents a measurement of the polarisation of W bosons from t t ̄ decays, recon-structed in events with one high-p T lepton and at least four jets. Data from pp collisions√at the LHC were collected at s = 8 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of20.2 fb −1 . The angle θ ∗ between the b-quark from the top quark decay and a direct W bo-son decay product in the W boson rest frame is sensitive to the W boson polarisation. Twodifferent W decay products are used as polarisation analysers: the charged lepton and thedown-type quark for the leptonically and hadronically decaying W boson, respectively. Themost precise measurement of the W boson polarisation via the distribution of cos θ ∗ is ob-tained using the leptonic analyser and events in which at least two of the jets are tagged asb-quark jets. The fitted fractions of longitudinal, left- and right-handed polarisation states areF 0 = 0.709 ± 0.019, F L = 0.299 ± 0.015 and F R = −0.008 ± 0.014, and are the mostprecisely measured W boson polarisation fractions to date. Limits on anomalous couplingsof the Wtb vertex are set.