Talk:Top quark

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[edit] Importance discussion

(Ironically, it is not of Top importance.)

I can't figure the logic by which you decided strange quarks are of Mid importance, but tops are of High importance. Surely the lighter strange quark is more relevant to real-world physics. Think strange quark stars or strangelets. The top is only relevant to beyond-the-Standard Model probing. -- Xerxes 17:16, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "real-world physics"? The top quark is a topic of active ongoing research. There isn't much new being studied or discovered when it comes to the lighter quarks (except maybe bottom). Bodhitha 15:11, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

The top quark is relatively new news and an active area of research. The strange quark, as far as I'm aware, is not. Quark stars and strangelets are entirely hypothetical, and I really don't know what you mean by "real-world" physics. It really doesn't have any properties more interesting than the up and down, and all the strange particles were discovered before quark theory. I wouldn't have rated the strange quark at all except that I was testing the rating system. -- SCZenz 19:18, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Well put. The road of assigning importance to purely hypotheticals (quark stars, etc.) is a slippery slope. Bodhitha 19:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason why active research should have any bearing on importance. There's no cutting edge research on atoms, anatomy or arithmetic, but these are crucial foundations of science. Encyclopedic importance should be inversely proportional to a subject's distance to the cutting edge. -- Xerxes 23:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the key here is importance "within physics" as it states, not necessarily encyclopedic importance? Bodhitha 03:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Xerxes, I don't think that's true even for print encyclopedias; they tend to have large, detailed articles on current issues which shrink over time as the editors put the subject into historical perspective. The fact of the matter is, for the next several decades at least, I anticipate that people are far more likely to look up the top quark than the strange quark. Thus on the much-shorter timescale on which Wikipedia changes, having this article up to standard is the most important—which is ultimately what these importance ratings are for. -- SCZenz 06:07, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, don't forget that most of the interesting facts about the strange quarks are actually interesting facts about the kaon (probably High importance) or other particles, or about its relationship to the Eightfold way (High importance) or the quark model (Top importance). The strange has its thunder stolen, in a real sense, by hadronizing; there's not much left to say about the quark itself after all that. Some day the interesting facts about the top quark may perhaps be in the Supersymmetry article, once we understand that the top Yukawa coupling equals one exactly and it was telling us what new physics to look for the whole time, but that day has not yet arrived; the interesting info on the top quark all goes in this article in the meantime. -- SCZenz 06:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, perhaps we should think of it this way: which of the elements of the periodic table would you omit if you had to choose one? or which of the five kingdoms of life? There are only six quarks. By what criterion could you choose one over the others? Maybe it's not really that important; I'm sure all six quark flavors will make it into whatever canonical edition is being cooked up. -- Xerxes 19:27, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

There are some very fundamental things that set aside the top quark from all 5 others. Among them are the fact that it is the only quark that you can study in "bare" form (since it decays before it ever hadronizes). It is also the *only* (known) fermion with a mass anywhere near the EWSB scale and as thus may offer unique insight into that mechanism. Bodhitha 22:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Electroweak symmetry breaking section

I have a rule of thumb about particle physics equations. If I can't make heads or tails out of it, despite being a grad student (albeit an experimentalist), it may be too complex for a general-use encyclopedia. And I have to say I don't understand the the Electroweak symmetry breaking section; in particular, I don't understand the purpose. Is the idea that the proximity of the top mass to a fixed point in the SM RGE is an argument for the MSSM or other supersymmetry model? If so, that should be made explicit, just for starters. One could also ask if we need all those equations, and if the top quark article is really the right place for that argument. -- SCZenz 02:13, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I kinda like it, tho it certainly could use some clarification. There are also some fascinating things that have been postulated in so-called topcolor models, which use technicolor but have top quarks as techniquarks. -- Xerxes 04:31, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

A general discussion of the implications of the top quark mass for various physics models would be very appropriate here. But this is a lot of detail about one issue, and rather vague to boot. -- SCZenz 06:38, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for the poor writing. I was just trying clarify what 'evidence for the MSSM' meant -- a bit of an oblique statement. The heaviness of the top disfavours many models of EWSB that involve a composite Higgs or technicolour models -- but that just means it favours an elementary Higgs. Some people claim that the proximity of the top quark's mass to its RG fixed point is evidence for the MSSM over the SM (both of which have elementary HIggs). I (or someone else) should explain that there is a basin of attraction around fixed points of RGs where couplings will flow to at low energies regardless of the initial value of the coupling. Therefore, if you believe that the top Yukawa is just a random number to start with at high energies then it is much more likely for it to be near the fixed point at low energies than some place else. There is certainly a lot that can be said explaining what a fixed point of an RG equation is -- but that probably belongs some place else.

I personally don't like blanket statements about whether a piece of experimental data supports or refutes some unproven theory unless the caveats are stated. To my knowledge this RG argument is the only way that the MSSM is preferred over the SM, and it is not amazingly strong evidence. Nonetheless it is interesting, especially with the (as yet unwritten) backstory that after the top was discovered, every theorist and their brother posted a paper claiming that they had predicted the top mass (through small modifications of this equation).

More concretely, I feel that the questions someone will come to the top quark page with is "what is it?" "why is it special?" "how did we discover it?" "what is the history behind the top?" "why do we care about it?"

• There was a set of predicitons for the top mass involving precision electroweak data which closely parallels the prediction of the charm mass. (this is not an RG argument and is the reason why 't Hooft and Veltmann won the Nobel Prize)
• Since there is an on going effort to measure the properties of the top quark, describing their SM predictions and possible deviations is possibly useful (and also motivations for why to expect such deviations).
• Also, driving EWSB from the top quark is a qualitative idea that is commonly used -- ie the quantum dynamics of the top quark yukawa coupling causes electroweak symmetry to break.
• I also feel that description of the experimental signature for top discovery is also important would be useful (ie 2 bjets + 2 leptons + MET, (or whichever the signal was))

Again, my regrets on the poor writing.

--jay 06:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A small problem with the wording

I'm uncomfortable with the wording. The article states "It was discovered in 1995 by the CDF and D0 experiments at Fermilab". Surely this should read "It was first observed...". Theorists predicted it before then, and as such it was expected to turn up at some high mass.

Apologies if I've missed a previous discussion on use of the word "discovered". I've had a look around and couldn't see anything conclusive.

86.15.240.245 04:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)