Single production of vector-like B quark decaying into bZ at future ep colliders

The vector-like quarks with non-chiral couplings are predicted in many new physics scenarios beyond the standard model. In a simplified model including a vector-like bottom quark (VLQ-B) with electric charge -1/3, we study the prospect of discovering VLQ-B through the decay channel B -> bZ at the Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC) and the Future Circular Collider-electron hadron (FCC-eh). By performing a detailed detector simulation and analysis for the signal and backgrounds, we calculate the excluding and discovering capabilities. We find that the excluding and discovering capabilities are enhanced obviously with the increase of the collision energy. At the 1.98 TeV LHeC, VLQ-B can be excluded and discovered in the correlated region of g* is an element of [0.05, 0.5] with mB is an element of [800 GeV, 1900 GeV] at the integrated luminosity of 1000 fb-1. At the 5.29 TeV FCC-eh, VLQ-B can be excluded (discovered) in the region of g* is an element of [0.05, 0.5] (g* is an element of [0.05, 0.5]) with mB is an element of [1000 GeV, 2750 GeV] (mB is an element of [1000 GeV, 2380 GeV]) at the integrated luminosity of 5000 fb-1.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).