Single-top-quark production at future ep colliders

The production of top quarks in single mode at future ep colliders is studied, the attention being mainly focused to the case of the proposed CERN LEP circle plus LHC collider. We are motivated to reanalyze such a process following the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab, Thanks to the measurement of its mass one is now able to establish more accurately the relevance of single-top-quark production for itself and for many other processes to which it may act as a background. In addition, the recent implement of our knowledge of the quark and gluon dynamics inside the proton now allows one to pin down the dependence of single-top-quark production on the partonic structure functions. Both the leptonic and hadronic decay channels of the top quark are studied and compared to the yield of the corresponding irreducible background in presence of b tagging.