Jets from Massive Unstable Particles: Top-Mass Determination

Abstract

We construct jet observables for energetic top quarks that can be used to determine a short distance top quark mass from reconstruction in e+ e- collisions with accuracy better than Lambda_{QCD}. Using a sequence of effective field theories we connect the production energy, mass, and top width scales, Q>> m>> Gamma, for the top jet cross section, and derive a QCD factorization theorem for the top invariant mass spectrum. Our analysis accounts for: alpha_s corrections from the production and mass scales, corrections due to constraints in defining invariant masses, non-perturbative corrections from the cross-talk between the jets, and alpha_s corrections to the Breit-Wigner line-shape. This paper mainly focuses on deriving the factorization theorem for hemisphere invariant mass distributions and other event shapes in e+e- collisions applicable at a future Linear Collider. We show that the invariant mass distribution is not a simple Breit-Wigner involving the top width. Even at leading order it is shifted and broadened by non-perturbative soft QCD effects. We predict that the invariant mass peak position increases linearly with Q/m due to these non-perturbative effects. They are encoded in terms of a universal soft function that also describes soft effects for massless dijet events. In a future paper we compute alpha_s corrections to the jet invariant mass spectrum, including a summation of large logarithms between the scales Q, m and Gamma.