Single top production in association with a Z boson at the LHC

We present results for the production of a Z boson in association with single top at next-to-leading order (NLO), including the decay of the top quark and the Z boson. This electroweak process gives rise to the trilepton signature l(+)l(-)l'(+/-) + jets + missing energy. We present results for this signature and show that the rate is competitive with the contribution of the mixed strong and electroweak production process, t (t) over barZ. As such it should be observable in the full data sample fromLHCrunning at root s = 8 TeV. The single top + Z process is a hitherto unconsidered irreducible background in searches for flavor changing neutral current decays of the top quark in t (t) over bar production. For a selection of cuts used at the LHC involving a b-tag it is the dominant background. In the Appendices we also briefly discuss the impact of NLO corrections on the related tH process.