SPIN CORRELATION EFFECTS IN THE HADROPRODUCTION AND DECAY OF VERY HEAVY TOP QUARK PAIRS

Abstract

Density matrix techniques in the helicity basis allow us to write down explicitly the squared matrix elements for tree-level hadroproduction and weak decay of very heavy top quark pairs, that decay before hadronization. This treatment includes the full effects of quark spin correlation. We illustrate the effects of spin correlation on physical distributions in [Formula: see text] dilepton events, [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], for the case m t =120 GeV at [Formula: see text], the energy of the Tevatron collider. The effects of spin correlation are quantitatively small compared to calculations that ignore them, giving corrections of order 10% or less in the physical distributions studied.