Four top quarks in extensions of the standard model

Final states with four tops appear in various extensions of the standard model. Alas, top reconstruction faces combinatorial issues as they show up as large multiplicity events. In this paper, we present a new procedure to determine whether new physics is in fact due to a new source for tops. We establish the use of this procedure to separate the signal from background (primarily t (t) over bar + jets). Our analysis is model independent, in that it does not use any details of the four top production (such as possible missing energy), and does not require b-tagging.