Charge Asymmetry in Hadroproduction of Heavy Quarks

A sizable difference in the differential production cross section of top and antitop quarks, respectively, is predicted for hadronically produced heavy quarks. It is of order ${\alpha }_s$ and arises from the interference between charge odd and even amplitudes, respectively. For the Fermilab Tevatron it amounts to up to $15\%$ for the differential distribution in suitable chosen kinematical regions. The resulting integrated forward-backward asymmetry of $4\%–5\%$ could be measured in the next round of experiments. At the CERN Large Hadron Collider the asymmetry can be studied by selecting appropriately chosen kinematical regions.