Physicists 'see' single top quarks at the Tevatron Fermi Laboratory

 

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Published on PhysicsHelp4u in October 2008

Scientists at the world's largest fully operating particle accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illionois, have discovered convincing evidence suggesting the existance of top quarks that are not coupled to their antiparticle, the antitop. These "single" top quarks have been hunted since Fermilab scientists first discovered top-antitop pairs in 1995.

The results published in a recent edition of Physical Review D, affirm and improve upon preliminary data published last year in Physical Review Letters, which pointed to the production of single top quarks but were not precise enough to claim true discovery. Fermilab physicists hope that the techniques they used to find the single top quark could help them in their search for the proposed Higgs boson, a particle that exists so far only in theory but if actually found would have a huge impact on physics. The Higgs is expected to reveal such basic information as why nature assigned certain masses to certain particles — the origin of mass, essentially.

 

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