  We investigate new physics scenarios where systems comprised of a single top
quark accompanied by missing transverse energy, dubbed monotops, can be
produced at the LHC. Following a simplified model approach, we describe all
possible monotop production modes via an effective theory and estimate the
sensitivity of the LHC, assuming 20 fb$^{-1}$ of collisions at a center-of-mass
energy of 8 TeV, to the observation of a monotop state. Considering both
leptonic and hadronic top quark decays, we show that large fractions of the
parameter space are reachable and that new physics particles with masses
ranging up to 1.5 TeV can leave hints within the 2012 LHC dataset, assuming
moderate new physics coupling strengths.
