Constraints on top quark flavor changing neutral currents using diphoton events at the LHC

In this paper we show that the diphoton mass spectrum in proton–proton collisions at the LHC is sensitive to the top quark flavor changing neutral current in the vertices of tuγ and tcγ. The diphoton mass spectrum measured by the CMS experiment at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 19.5 fb−1 is used as an example to set limits on these FCNC couplings. It is also shown that the angular distribution of the diphotons is sensitive to anomalous tuγ and tcγ couplings and it is a powerful tool to probe any value of the branching fraction of top quark rare decay to an up-type quark plus a photon down to the order of 10−4.