Top Search Progress in CDF

Abstract

The discovery of the top quark t has been, for more than 10 years, a missing key confirmation of the Standard Model. Together with the proof of its existence, the knowledge of its mass, production, and decay properties will improve our current understanding and have implications for new physics. Lower limits on the t mass, mt, have been 27 GeV from TRISTAN,1 and 41 GeV from UA1.2 There are theoretical arguments that limit the top mass to be less than 180–200 GeV.3 The observation of the top quark is one of the main physics goals of the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF).4