This will be a required acquisition text for academic libraries. More than ten years after its discovery, still relatively little is known about the top quark, the heaviest known elementary particle. This extensive survey summarizes and reviews top-quark physics based on the precision measurements at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, as well as examining in detail the sensitivity of these experiments to new physics. Finally, the author provides an overview of top quark physics at the Large Hadron Collider.

We present the latest results on the top quark obtained by the CDF experiment using a data sample of about 110 pb[sup -1]. The data sample has been collected at the FermiLab Tevatron Collider with p[anti p] collisions at[radical]s= 1.8 TeV. We briefly describe the candidate event selection and then discuss the production cross section determination and the mass measurement. Combining the results from the channels with at least one W decaying leptonically into an electron or muon, we measure[sigma][sub t[anti t]]= 7.5[sup+1.9][sub -1.6] pb. Our best measured value for the top mass gives M[sub t]= 176.8[+-]6.5 GeV/c[sup 2]. We also report on the observation of t[anti t] production in the all hadronic decay channel using kinematic selection and b identification, and in the channel containing one hadronically decaying[tau] lepton. Finally we discuss the kinematics of top events and measure the matrix element[vert-bar]V[sub tb][vert-bar]=1.12[+-]0.12.

We present the recent results on top quark physics and B physics with the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). These results come from analyses using a full data sample at an integrated luminosity of 109 pb−1 cross section in 1.8-TeV p{anti p} collisions. We measure the top quark mass to be 175.8±6.5 GeV/c2 and the t{anti t} production cross section to be 7.6{sup +1.8}{sub -1.5} pb. We also present measurements of the lifetimes of B-hadrons and the time- dependent B°-{anti B}° mixing which results in the mass difference between heavy and light B°{sub d} mesons ([Delta]m{sub d}) of 0.464±0.030(stat)±0.026(syst) ps−1.

The top quark is by far the heaviest known fundamental particle with a mass nearing that of a gold atom. Because of this strikingly high mass, the top quark has several unique properties and might play an important role in electroweak symmetry breaking—the mechanism that gives all elementary particles mass. Creating top quarks requires access to very high energy collisions, and at present only the Tevatron collider at Fermilab is capable of reaching these energies. Until now, top quarks have only been observed produced in pairs via the strong interaction. At hadron colliders, it should also be possible to produce single top quarks via the electroweak interaction. Studies of single top quark production provide opportunities to measure the top quark spin, how top quarks mix with other quarks, and to look for new physics beyond the standard model. Because of these interesting properties, scientists have been looking for single top quarks for more than 15 years. This thesis presents the first discovery of single top quark production. It documents one of the flagship measurements of the D0 experiment, a collaboration of more than 600 physicists from around the world. It describes first observation of a physical process known as “single top quark production”, which had been sought for more than 10 years before its eventual discovery in 2009. Further, his thesis describes, in detail, the innovative approach Dr. Gillberg took to this analysis. Through the use of Boosted Decision Trees, a machine-learning technique, he observed the tiny single top signal within an otherwise overwhelming background. This Doctoral Thesis has been accepted by Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada.

The top quark plays an important role in the grand scheme of particle physics, and is also interesting on its own merits. We present recent results from CDF on top-quark physics based on 100-200 pb−1 of p{bar p} collision data. We have measured the t{bar t} cross section in different decay modes using several different techniques, and are beginning our studies of top-quark properties. New analyses for this conference include a measurement of [sigma]{sub t{bar t}} in the lepton-plus-jets channel using a neural net to distinguish signal and background events, and measurements of top-quark branching fractions.

Twenty years after its discovery in 1995 by the CDF and D0 collaborations at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at Fermilab, the top quark still undergoes intensive studies at the Tevatron and the LHC at CERN. In this article, recent top quark physics results from CDF and D0 are reported. In particular, measurements of single top quark and double top quark production, the $t\bar{t}$ forward-backward asymmetry and the top quark mass are discussed.