Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:math>-channel single top quark production and decay at the LHC

We present a study of electroweak production of top and antitop quarks in the $s$-channel mode at the LHC, including next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the production and decay of the single (anti)top quark. The spin is preserved in production and decay by using the narrow width approximation for the (anti)top quark. We show the effect of different $O({\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s})$ contributions on the inclusive cross section and various kinematic distributions at parton level after imposing relevant kinematic cuts to select $s$-channel single top quark events. We also discuss several possibilities for measuring the top quark polarization.