Eur. Phys. J. C (2012) 72: 2007
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-012-2007-0

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Electroweak precision observables in a fourth generation model with general flavour structure

¹ Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology, RWTH Aachen, 52056, Aachen, Germany
² Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76128, Karlsruhe, Germany

^* e-mail: martin.wiebusch@kit.edu

Received: 27 February 2012
Revised: 3 April 2012
Published online: 22 May 2012

Abstract

We calculate the contributions to electroweak precision observables (EWPOs) due to a fourth generation of fermions with the most general (quark-) flavour structure (but assuming Dirac neutrinos and a trivial flavour structure in the lepton sector). The new-physics contributions to the EWPOs are calculated at one-loop order using automated tools (FeynArts/FormCalc). No further approximations are made in our calculation. We discuss the size of non-oblique contributions arising from Z–quark–anti-quark vertex corrections and the dependence of the EWPOs on all CKM mixing angles involving the fourth generation. We find that the electroweak precision observables are sensitive to two of the fourth-generation mixing angles and that the corresponding constraints on these angles are competitive with those obtained from flavour physics. For non-trivial 4×4 flavour structures, the non-oblique contributions lead to relative corrections of several permille and should be included in a global fit.