Single top quark tW+X production at the CERN LHC:: A closer look -: art. no. 034012

We reexamine the tW+X single top-quark production process, which is important at the CERN LHC, unlike what happens at the Fermilab Tevatron. Special attention is paid to the treatment of the 2 --> 2[Wt] process and part of its next-to-leading correction, the 2 --> 3 [Wtb] process. We show that the 2 --> 3 [Wtb] process has to be correctly taken into account with a proper subtraction of the top-pair contribution, and that it has qualitatively different kinematical distributions from the 2 --> 2[Wt] process. We present the total cross section of the tW +X production as bring about 62 ph. and at the proper QCD scale equal to the top quark mass, suggest a method of combining the Wt and Wtb processes with gauge-invariant subtraction of the t(t) over bar part, which allows us to reproduce the kinematical properties correctly and perform a proper event simulation of the tW+X process in the whole kinematical region.