Search for pair production of heavy particles decaying to a top quark and a gluon in the lepton+jets final state in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV
A search is presented for the pair production of new heavy resonances, each decaying into a top quark (t) or antiquark and a gluon (g). The analysis uses data marc:recorded with the CMS detector from proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb$^{-1}$. Events with one muon or electron, multiple jets, and missing transverse momentum are selected. After using a deep neural network to enrich the data sample with signal-like events, distributions in the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of all reconstructed objects are analyzed in the search for a signal. No significant deviations from the standard model prediction are found. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the product of cross section and branching fraction squared for the pair production of excited top quarks in the $\mathrm{t^*}$ $\to$ tg decay channel. The upper limits range from 0.12 pb to 0.8 fb for a $\mathrm{t^*}$ with spin-1/2 and from 0.015 pb to 1.0 fb for a $\mathrm{t^*}$ with spin-3/2. These correspond to mass exclusion limits up to 1050 and 1700 GeV for spin-1/2 and spin-3/2 $\mathrm{t^*}$ particles, respectively. These are the most stringent limits to date on the existence of $\mathrm{t^*}$ $\to$ tg resonances.
Benecke, A., Bethani, A., Bruno, G., Caputo, C., de Favereau de Jeneret, J., Delaere, C., Donertas, I. S., Giammanco, A., Guzel, A. O., Jain, S., Lemaitre, V., Lidrych, J., Mastrapasqua, P., Tran, T. T., Turkcapar, S., CMS, & et al. (2025). Search for pair production of heavy particles decaying to a top quark and a gluon in the lepton+jets final state in proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV. European Physical Journal C, 85. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-13729-y (Original work published 2025)