Physics Colloquium

Dr. Michael E. Peskin, SLAC, Stanford University

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

4:00pm, The John A. Wheeler Lecture Hall (RLM 4.102). Coffee and cookies will be served at 3:45pm in RLM 4.102

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.