Hunting scalar leptoquarks with boosted tops in pair and single production channels

The LHC search strategies for leptoquarks that couple dominantly to the top quark are different than the ones that couple mostly to light quarks. We consider TeV-scale charge 1/3 ($\phi_1$) and 5/3 ($\phi_5$) scalar leptoquarks that can decay to a top quark and a charged lepton pair ($t\ell$) giving rise to a resonance system with a boosted top quark and a high-$p_{\rm T}$ lepton at the LHC. We implement a search strategy for these leptoquarks with a signal that is a combination of pair and single production channels by selecting events with at least one hadronically decaying boosted top and two high-$p_{\rm T}$ same flavour opposite sign leptons. While the pair production is best for discovery in the lower mass region, our combined signal can substantially improve the LHC discovery reach as single productions generally overcome pair production in the high mass region. Contrary to the general consensus, we find that the single production of top-philic $\phi = \{\phi_1,\phi_5\}$ in association with a lepton and jets could be significant for order one $\phi t\ell$ coupling if $\phi$ couples to a left-handed top quark. Our estimate shows that the leptoquark searches in the $t\ell\ell+X$ channel can discover a scalar leptoquark as heavy as $2.1$ TeV with $5\sigma$ significance for some coupling configurations at the $14$ TeV HL-LHC.