Top Partner Discovery in the $T\to tZ$ channel at the LHC

Understand

In this paper we study the discovery potential of the LHC run II for heavy vector-like top quarks in the decay channel to a top and a $Z$ boson.

• Despite the usually smaller branching ratio compared to charged-current decays, this channel is rather clean and allows for a complete mass reconstruction of the heavy top.
• The latter is achieved in the leptonic decay channel of the $Z$ boson and in the fully hadronic top channel using boosted jet and jet substructure techniques.
• To be as model-independent as possible, a simplified model approach with only two free parameters has been applied.