The cross-section for the production of a single top quark in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 is measured. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 20.3 fb-1, collected by the ATLAS detector in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Events containing two leptons and one central b-jet are selected. The Wt signal is separated from the backgrounds using boosted decision trees, each of which combines a number of discriminating variables into one classifier. Production of Wt events is observed with a significance of 7.7[sigma]. The cross-section is extracted in a profile likelihood fit to the classifier output distributions. The Wt cross-section, inclusive of decay modes, is measured to be 23.0±1.3(stat.)-3.5+3.2(syst.)±1.1(lumi.) pb. The measured cross-section is used to extract a value for the CKM matrix element.

Before any kind of new physics discovery could be made at the LHC, a precise understanding and measurement of the Standard Model of particle physics' processes was necessary. The book provides an introduction to top quark production in the context of the Standard Model and presents two such precise measurements of the production of top quark pairs in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV that were observed with the ATLAS Experiment at the LHC. The presented measurements focus on events with one charged lepton, missing transverse energy and jets. Using novel and advanced analysis techniques as well as a good understanding of the detector, they constitute the most precise measurements of the quantity at that time.

This book reports on the search for a new heavy particle, the Vector-Like Top quark (VLT), in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The signal process is the pair production of VLT decaying into a Higgs boson and top quark (TT→Ht+X, X=Ht, Wb, Zt). The signal events result in top–antitop quarks final states with additional heavy flavour jets. The book summarises the analysis of the data collected with the ATLAS detector in 2015 and 2016. In order to better differentiate between signals and backgrounds, exclusive taggers of top quark and Higgs boson were developed and optimised for VLT signals. These efforts improved the sensitivity by roughly 30%, compared to the previous analysis. The analysis outcomes yield the strongest constraints on parameter space in various BSM theoretical models. In addition, the book addresses detector operation and the evaluation of tracking performance. These efforts are essential to properly collecting dense events and improving the accuracy of the reconstructed objects that are used for particle identification. As such, they represent a valuable contribution to data analysis in extremely dense environments.

Abstract : In the Standard Model, the top quark plays a unique role as the heaviest known fundamental particle and as a quark that decays before it is able to hadronize. Top quarks are expected to decay to a W-boson and a b-quark nearly 100% of the time. If the branching ratio of t → Wb is lower than one, the distribution of the number of b-tagged jets will shift to lower multiplicities. A simultaneous likelihood fit to the number of b-tagged jets distributions in the lepton+jets and dilepton channels is performed on 4.7 fb−1 of data collected by the ATLAS detector to extract both the branching ratio and the tt ̄ cross section. The branching ratio of t → Wb, R, is measured to be 1.06±0.11, which is consistent with the Standard Model value. This is the first measurement of the t → Wb branching ratio performed with the ATLAS detector using both the lepton+jets and dilepton channels at the LHC. The tt ̄ cross section is measured to be [special characters omitted] pb, which agrees with NNLO predictions.

This thesis introduces readers to the Standard Model, the top quark and its properties, before explaining the concept of spin correlation measurement. The first measurement of top quark spin correlations at the LHC in the lepton+jets decay channel is presented. As the heaviest elementary particle, the top quark plays an essential role in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. In the case of top quarks being produced in pairs at hadron colliders, the Standard Model predicts their spins to be correlated. The degree of correlation depends on both the production mechanism and properties of the top quark. Any deviation from the Standard Model prediction can be an indicator for new physics phenomena. The thesis employs an advanced top quark reconstruction algorithm including dedicated identification of the up- and down-type quarks from the W boson decay.