Top Quark
Classification: quark, fermion
Fundamental: yes
Family: third
Mass: 172000 MeV
Interactions: Weak, Electromagnetic (with charge 2/3), Strong, Gravity
Spin: 1/2
Lifetime: ~5e-25 s
When the bottom quark was discovered in 1977, it seemed almost a given that it would have a quark partner. Down had up, strange had charm, and so bottom should have top. The Standard Model needed a full set of six quarks to mathematically behave itself, keeping observables finite and probabilities less than one, that sort of thing. Almost all of the properties of the top quark could be predicted, including how it could be produced at any of the experiments of the day.
What wasn't known was the mass of the new quark. The Standard Model has never been able to predict the masses of the matter particles; those have to be determined by experiment. More massive particles require more powerful experiments to produce. The top quark had to be more massive than all the other quarks; otherwise it would have been discovered by then. So the hunt was on to detect mesons containing the top quark.
It was almost twenty years later when the top quark was first discovered at the Tevatron, the highest energy accelerator in the world at the time. The top quark is heavy. Incredibly heavy. The fundamental top quark all by itself is about as heavy as a tungsten atom, the seventy-fourth element on the periodic table.
Due to its great mass, the top quark decays extremely quickly, and 99% of the time decays weakly into a b-quark. This makes top quark decays distinctive from light quark jets because the events contain distinctive b-jets, and missing energy and leptons from the weak decay itself. Also, the top quark decays faster than it can form hadrons--there are no known mesons or baryons containing the top quark. With the top quark, particle physicists come as close as they ever have to studying a bare quark.
With the top quark, we now have met all twelve matter particles in the Standard Model. They come with a wide array of properties and a mind-boggling variety of masses, and make up all the matter we are familiar with in the universe. The entire clan is here for the holidays!
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Top quark specifications are a key feature, and "25 Days of Particles" is closing in on the issue. Research progress depends on the data density of the atomic topological function used to analyze the structural details of electrons, waves, energy, and force fields. Recent advancements in quantum string science have produced the picoyoctometric (10^-36 m), 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic mechanics. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom's RQT (relative quantum topological) data point mapping function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength.
The atom psi (Z) pulsates at the frequency {Nhu=e/h} by cycles of {e=m(c^2)} transformation of nuclear surface mass to string forcons with joule values, followed by nuclear force absorption. This radiation process is limited only by timespace boundaries of {Gravity-Time}, where gravity is the force binding space to psi, forming the GT integral atomic wavefunction. The expression is defined as the differential series expansion of nuclear output rates with quantum symmetry numbers assigned along the progression to give topology to the solutions.
Next, the correlation function for the manifold of internal heat capacity energy particle 3D string-structural functions is extracted by rearranging the total internal momentum function to the photon gain rule and integrating it for GT limits. This produces a series of 26 topological waveparticle functions of the five classes; {+Positron, Workon, Thermon, -Electromagneton, Magnemedon}, accounting for each energy intermedon of the 5/2 kT J internal energy cloud.
Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, S.B. delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series), 5/2 k, 3/2k. They quantize atomic dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the CRQT exact picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model function, responsive to software application keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions. This system also gives a new equation for the magnetic flux variable B, which appears as a waveparticle of varying frequency.
Images of the h-bar magnetic energy waveparticle of ~175 picoyoctometers, and the workon, h, are found online at http://www.symmecon.com/GUPPP.docx. CRQT conforms to the unopposed motion of disclosure in U.S. District (NM) Court, 04/02/2001, The Solution to the Equation of Schrodinger.
(C) 2010, Dale B. Ritter, B.A.
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