Top quark production at TeV energies as a potential supersymmetry detector- art. no. 053016

We consider the process of top-quark-top-antiquark production from electron -positron annihilation, for center-of-mass energies in the few TeV regime, in the minimal supersymmetric standard model theoretical framework. We show that, at the one loop level, the variations of a number of observable quan tities with energy (slopes) in a region of about 3 TeV are only dependent o n tan beta. Under optimal experimental conditions, a combined measurement o f these slopes might identify tan beta values in a range tan beta <2, tan < beta>>20 with acceptable precision.