Physics Impact of a Precise Determination of the Top Quark Mass at an e+e- Linear Collider

الأصل · EN

At a prospective e+e- Linear Collider (LC) a very precise determination of the top quark mass with an accuracy of δmₜ <= 100 MeV will be possible. This is to be compared with the envisaged accuracy of δmₜ = 1-2 GeV at the Tevatron and the LHC. We discuss the physics impact of such a precise determination of mₜ, focusing on the Standard Model (SM) and its minimal supersymmetric extension (MSSM). In particular, we show the importance of a precise knowledge of mₜ for electroweak precision observables, and for Higgs physics and the scalar top sector of the MSSM. Taking the mSUGRA model as a specific example, we furthermore demonstrate the importance of a precise mₜ value for the prediction of sparticle masses and for constraints on the parameter space allowed by the relic density. The uncertainty in mₜ also significantly affects the reconstruction of the supersymmetric high scale theory. We find that going from hadron collider to LC accuracy in mₜ leads to an improvement of the investigated quantities by up to an order of magnitude.