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tt¯ production as a probe of dimension-six SMEFT at higher orders

Nikolaos Kidonakis and Kaan Şimşek

Phys. Rev. D 114, 055019 – Published 11 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fd9b-clnl

Abstract

We study top-antitop pair production in proton-proton collisions within the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) at dimension six. We focus on the top chromomagnetic operator CtG together with the four-quark operators relevant for unpolarized tt¯ production. We analyze the top-quark single-differential transverse-momentum (pT) and rapidity (y) distributions and the double-differential distributions in pT and y (pT×y) at 13 TeV, and we present projections for 13.6 TeV using the same binning. Our highest-order setup combines next-to-next-to-leading-order (NNLO) Standard Model (SM) predictions with approximate NNLO SM-SMEFT interference corrections. We find that higher-order QCD effects are essential for a stable SMEFT interpretation, yielding substantially more robust bounds and milder parameter degeneracies. The strongest sensitivity is obtained for CtG. In the combined highest-order analysis of the 13-TeV results and 13.6-TeV projections, we obtain sensitivity to effective scales up to 3.9 TeV. Our results show that higher-order differential top-pair production provides a precise and theoretically controlled probe of the top chromomagnetic interaction.

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