Top quark effective couplings from top-pair tagged photoproduction in $\boldsymbol{pe^-}$ collisions

Abstract

We summarize the quantitative results of our analysis [1] of top-pair photoproduction in semileptonic mode in $pe$ collisions at the LHeC and FCC-he. We define three photoproduction regions, based on the rapidity acceptance range of the electron tagger, that provide different degrees of sensitivity to top-quark effective couplings. We focus on the $t\bar{t}\gamma$ dipole couplings and the left-handed vector $tbW$ coupling, for which we determine limits at both energies in the different photoproduction regions. We find that the LHeC and FCC-he will yield tight direct bounds on top dipole moments, greatly improving on current direct limits from hadron colliders, and direct limits on the $tbW$ coupling as restrictive as those expected from the HL-LHC. We also consider indirect limits from $b\to s \gamma$ branching ratio and $CP$ asymmetry, that are well known to be very sensitive probes of top electromagnetic dipole moments.