This will be a required acquisition text for academic libraries. More than ten years after its discovery, still relatively little is known about the top quark, the heaviest known elementary particle. This extensive survey summarizes and reviews top-quark physics based on the precision measurements at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, as well as examining in detail the sensitivity of these experiments to new physics. Finally, the author provides an overview of top quark physics at the Large Hadron Collider.
The main pacemakers of scienti?c research are curiosity, ingenuity, and a pinch of persistence. Equipped with these characteristics a young researcher will be s- cessful in pushing scienti?c discoveries. And there is still a lot to discover and to understand. In the course of understanding the origin and structure of matter it is now known that all matter is made up of six types of quarks. Each of these carry a different mass. But neither are the particular mass values understood nor is it known why elementary particles carry mass at all. One could perhaps accept some small generic mass value for every quark, but nature has decided differently. Two quarks are extremely light, three more have a somewhat typical mass value, but one quark is extremely massive. It is the top quark, the heaviest quark and even the heaviest elementary particle that we know, carrying a mass as large as the mass of three iron nuclei. Even though there exists no explanation of why different particle types carry certain masses, the internal consistency of the currently best theory—the standard model of particle physics—yields a relation between the masses of the top quark, the so-called W boson, and the yet unobserved Higgs particle. Therefore, when one assumes validity of the model, it is even possible to take precise measurements of the top quark mass to predict the mass of the Higgs (and potentially other yet unobserved) particles.
In an epoch when particle physics is awaiting a major step forward, the Large Hydron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva will soon be operational. It will collide a beam of high energy protons with another similar beam circulation in the same 27 km tunnel but in the opposite direction, resulting in the production of many elementary particles some never created in the laboratory before. It is widely expected that the LHC will discover the Higgs boson, the particle which supposedly lends masses to all other fundamental particles. In addition, the question as to whether there is some new law of physics at such high energy is likely to be answered through this experiment. The present volume contains a collection of articles written by international experts, both theoreticians and experimentalists, from India and abroad, which aims to acquaint a non-specialist with some basic issues related to the LHC. At the same time, it is expected to be a useful, rudimentary companion of introductory exposition and technical expertise alike, and it is hoped to become unique in its kind. The fact that there is substantial Indian involvement in the entire LHC endeavour, at all levels including fabrication, physics analysis procedures as well as theoretical studies, is also amply brought out in the collection.
Hadron colliders probe physics at new energy frontiers and search for new particles and forces. In addition, hadron colliders now provide also an environment for precision physics. The present volume collects the results from recently completed runs at major colliders as well as new ideas about collider physics and techniques. It will serve as the main source of reference in the field for many years to come.
This book deals with the most recent achievements in the following areas of high energy physics: physics of e+e- collisions, lepton-nucleon scattering, relativistic heavy ion collisions (the quest for quark-gluon plasma), and multiparticle production. New experimental results from Tevatron, LEP, SPS and HERA and the theoretical progress in the aforementioned fields are presented.
The proceedings of this series of annual symposia represent an extensive summary of the experimental and theoretical status of high energy physics at hadron colliders. This volume discusses the latest results on top and beauty physics, QCD, electroweak physics and searches for new particles. The prospects of this field for LHC, Tevatron and Hera machines are also reported.
This book gathers the proceedings of The Hadron Collider Physics Symposia (HCP) 2005, and reviews the state-of-the-art in the key physics directions of experimental hadron collider research. Topics include QCD physics, precision electroweak physics, c-, b-, and t-quark physics, physics beyond the Standard Model, and heavy ion physics. The present volume serves as a reference for everyone working in the field of accelerator-based high-energy physics.
