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 Physics at Virginia
ABSTRACT:
The top quark is a unique member of the collection of known fundamental particles. Its mass is exceedingly large -- nearly that of a single atom of gold -- which is remarkable given that the top quark is considered to be a point particle with no substructure. Further, the top quark decays rapidly, long before having the chance to form a bound state with other quarks. Hence, the study of top-quark decays affords a direct glimpse at the properties of the parent quark itself, allowing measurements of its mass, spin, charge and other properties. Finally, several signatures of new phenomena accessible at particle colliders either suffer from top-quark production as a significant background or contain top quarks themselves. With the advent of the operational era of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment has the opportunity to perform precision measurements of top-quark production and decay for the first time away from Fermilab's Tevatron collider, whose experiments produced the discovery of the top quark in 1994. In this talk I will present some of the first results of the CMS top-quark physics program, results in which members of the University of Virginia CMS group made significant contributions.
Colloquium
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
3:30 PM
Physics Building, Room 204
Note special date.
Note special room.

Special Colloquium


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