Consistency of the two-Higgs-doublet model and CP violation in top production at the LHC

It is important to provide guidance on whether CP violation may be measurable in top-quark production at the Large Hadron Collider. The present work extends an earlier analysis of the non-supersymmetric two-Higgs-doublet model in this respect, by allowing a more general potential. Also, a more comprehensive study of theoretical and experimental constraints on the model is presented. Vacuum stability, unitarity, direct searches and electroweak precision measurements severely constrain the model. We explore, at low tan beta, the allowed regions in the multidimensional parameter space that give a viable physical model. This exploration is focused on the parameter space of the neutral sector rotation matrix, which is closely related to the Yukawa couplings of interest. In most of the remaining allowed regions, the model violates CP. We present a quantitative discussion of a particular CP-violating observable. This would be measurable in semileptonically decaying top and antitop quarks produced at the LHC, provided the number of available events is of the order of a million. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.