Probing New Physics from Top-charm Associated Productions at Linear Colliders

The top-charm associated productions via $e^+ e^-$, $e^- \gamma$ and $\gamma \gamma$ collisions at linear colliders, which are extremely suppressed in the Standard Model (SM), could be significantly enhanced in some extensions of the SM. In this article we calculate the full contribution of the topcolor-assisted technicolor (TC2) to these productions and then compare the results with the existing predictions of the SM, the general two-Higgs-doublet model and the Minimal Supersymmetric Model. We find that the TC2 model predicts much larger production rates than other models and the largest-rate channel is $\gamma \gamma \to t \bar{c}$, which exceeds 10 fb for a large part of the parameter space. From the analysis of the observability of such productions at the future linear colliders, we find that the predictions of the TC2 model can reach the observable level for a large part of the parameter space while the predictions of other models are hardly accessible.