Discovering the top partners at the LHC using same-sign dilepton final states

A natural, non-supersymmetric solution to the hierarchy problem generically requires fermionic partners of the top quark with masses not much heavier than 500GeV. We study the pair production and detection at the LHC of the top partners with electric charge Qe = 5/3 (T5/3) and Qe = −1/3 (B), that are predicted in models where the Higgs is a pseudo-Goldstone boson. The exotic T5/3 fermion, in particular, is the distinct prediction of a LR custodial parity invariance of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector. Both kinds of new fermions decay to Wt, leading to a tt̄WW final state. We focus on the golden channel with two same-sign leptons, and show that a discovery could come with less than 100 pb (less than 20 fb) of integrated luminosity for masses M = 500GeV (M = 1TeV). In the case of the T5/3, we present a simple strategy for its reconstruction in the fully hadronic decay chain. Although no full mass reconstruction is possible for the B, we still find that the same-sign dilepton channel offers the best chances of discovery compared to other previous searches that used final states with one or two opposite-sign leptons, and hence suffered from the large tt̄ background.