Searches for new physics with boosted top quarks in the MadAnalysis 5 and Rivet frameworks

High-momentum top quarks are a natural physical system in collider experiments for testing models of new physics, and jet substructure methods are key both to exploiting their largest decay mode and to assuaging resolution difficulties as the boosted system becomes increasingly collimated in the detector. To be used in new-physics interpretation studies, it is crucial that related methods get implemented in analysis frameworks allowing for the reinterpretation of the results of the LHC such as MadAnalysis 5 and Rivet. We describe the implementation of the HEPTopTagger algorithm in these two frameworks, and we exemplify the usage of the resulting functionalities to explore the sensitivity of boosted top reconstruction performance to newphysics contributions from the StandardModel Effective Field Theory. The results of this study lead to important conclusions about the implicit assumption of Standard-Modellike top quark decays in associated collider analyses, and for the prospects to constrain the Standard Model Effective Field Theory via kinematic observables built from boosted semi-leptonic t (t) over bar events selected using HEPTopTagger.

Automated summary

This study describes the implementation of the HEPTopTagger algorithm in analysis frameworks like MadAnalysis 5 and Rivet, and examines the impact of the algorithm on the performance of boosted top quark reconstruction. The results of this study provide important insights into the implicit assumption of Standard-Model-like top quark decays in associated collider analyses, as well as the prospects of constraining the Standard Model Effective Field Theory using kinematic observables constructed from boosted semi-leptonic top quark events selected using HEPTopTagger.