Friday, March 13th, 2009

Particle Hunters

This proton-antiproton collision, recorded by the DZero collaboration, is among the single top quark candidate events. The top quark decayed and produced a bottom quark jet (b jet), a muon and a neutrino. Credit: DZero collaboration.

Researchers announced this week that they've detected the production of single top quarks at Fermilab. The production of single top quarks has been predicted by the Standard Model of physics, but such events hadn't been definitely seen before. Now, two groups using different detectors at Fermilab have spotted the production of the single particles, which is governed by the weak interaction. Observing a single top quark gives physicists more information about the top quarks and the other particles that pair with them.

The lab also announced this week that they've refined their measurement for the mass of the W-boson, a value that helps define the window for the search for the Higgs boson. We'll talk about the work and the search for other, still more exotic particles such as the Higgs.