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Theory Group
Physics Colloquium, 07 October 2015


Michael Peskin, SLAC

The Top Quark: Yes, it is heavy, but is it essential?

abstract

The top quark now well-characterized as the heaviest particle in the particle physicist's Standard Model. But, still, we do not understand the significance of this property. Is the top quark just an ordinary quark, though somewhat oversized? Does its heaviness give it a special role in the story of the Higgs boson, dark matter, and other open questions? Is it the lightest of a set of even more massive particles, lying just over our current horizon? Does it represent the climax of our current story of particle physics, or the beginning of the next one? In this lecture, I will review what is known about the top quark and discuss the directions that the study of this quark may take us in the future.



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