Paper detail

Search for top quark decays $t\rightarrow qH$ with $H\toγγ$ using the ATLAS detector

A search is performed for flavour-changing neutral currents in the decay of a top quark to an up-type ($c, u$) quark and a Higgs boson, where the Higgs boson decays to two photons. The proton-proton collision data set used corresponds to 4.7 fb$^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 7 \tev\ and 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 8 \tev\ collected by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Top quark pair events are searched for in which one top quark decays to $qH$ and the other decays to $bW$. Both the hadronic and the leptonic decay modes of the $W$ boson are used. No significant signal is observed and an upper limit is set on the $t\rightarrow qH$ branching ratio of 0.79% at the 95% confidence level. The corresponding limit on the $tqH$ coupling combination $\sqrt{λ_{tcH}^{2} + λ_{tuH}^{2}}$ is 0.17.