Top Quark Production
Proton + Antiproton --> Top + Antitop
A quark (from within a proton) and an antiquark
(from an antiproton) colliding at
high energy can annihilate to produce a top
quark and a top antiquark, which then decay into other particles.
- Frame 1: A quark from a proton and an
anti-quark from an anti-proton rush to meet each other.
- Frame 2: These quarks collide and annihilate....
- Frame 3: ...into virtual gluons.
- Frame 4: A top and antitop quark emerge from the gluon cloud.
- Frame 5: These quarks begin moving apart, stretching the
color force field
(gluon field) between them.
- Frame 6: Before the top quark and
antiquark have moved very far, they decay into a bottom and antibottom
quark (respectively) with the emission of W force carrier particles.
- Frame 7: The new bottom quark and antibottom
quark rebound away from the emitted W force carrier particles.
- Frame 8: An electron and neutrino emerge from the
virtual W- boson, and an up quark
and down antiquark emerge from the
virtual W+ boson.
- Frame 9: The bottom quark and bottom antiquark,
electron, neutrino, up quark,
and down antiquark all move away from one another.
What is wrong with this picture?
The intermediate stages of this
process occur in less than almost a billionth of
a billionth of a billionth of a second, and are not observable.
You can see this as an
ANIMATION
if you are using Netscape.
Depending on your network speed,
loading the animation can be quite slow (but worthwhile!).
Look at an actual Top Event
Either use your browser's "back" button
or click on this button to go to the
decay path.
Go the the Top Quark page