Minimal flavor violation and anomalous top decays

Top-quark physics at the LHC may open a window to physics beyond the Standard Model and even lead us to an understanding of the phenomenon of ``flavor.'' However, current flavor data is a strong hint that no ``new physics'' with a generic flavor structure can be expected at the TeV scale. In turn, if there is ``new physics'' at the TeV scale, it must be ``minimally flavor violating.'' This has become a widely accepted assumption for ``new physics'' models. In this paper we propose a model-independent scheme to test minimal flavor violation for the anomalous charged $Wtq$, $q\ensuremath{\in}{d,s,b}$ and flavor-changing $Vtq$, $q\ensuremath{\in}{u,c}$ and $V\ensuremath{\in}{Z,\ensuremath{\gamma},g}$ couplings within an effective field theory framework, i.e., in a model-independent way. We perform a spurion analysis of our effective field theory approach and calculate the decay rates for the anomalous top-quark decays in terms of the effective couplings for different helicities by using a two-Higgs doublet model of type II, under the assumption that the top-quark is produced at a high-energy collision and decays as a quasi-free particle.