Abstract
We investigate the sensitivity of the 14 TeV LHC to pair-produced top partners (T) decaying into the Standard Model top quark (t) plus either a gluon (g) or a photon (). The decays T tg and T t can be dominant when the mixing between the top partner and top quark are negligible. In this case, the conventional decays T bW , T tZ, and T th are highly suppressed and can be neglected. We take a model-independent approach using effective operators for the T -t-g and T -t- interactions, considering both spin- top partners. We perform a semi-realistic simulation with boosted top quark tagging and an appropriate implementation of a jet-faking-photon rate. Despite a simple dimensional analysis indicating that the branching ratios BR(T t) << BR(T tg) due to the electric-magnetic coupling being much smaller than the strong force coupling, our study shows that the LHC sensitivity to TT. This is due to much smaller backgrounds attributed to the isolated high-p(T) photon. We find that with these decay channels and 3 ab(-1) of data, the LHC is sensitive to top partner masses m(T) less than or similar to 1.4-1.8 TeV for spin- top partners, respectively.