2023 Fall Colloquium Series; Peter Onyisi, Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin.
Top Quarks: The New Flavor

The two heaviest known fundamental particles are the top quark and the Higgs boson. The top quark is a fleeting form of matter, not present in our day-to-day lives but whose quantum imprints are felt everywhere, and the Higgs boson is the visible ripples of a particle field that fills all of space and gives masses to other particles. The two particles are intimately intertwined - the Higgs boson gives the top quark its mass, and the top quark determines the potential energy of the Higgs field. Understanding the relationship of the two - in the field of "flavor physics" of the top quark - is critical for understanding fundamental particle physics both now and right after the Big Bang. The Large Hadron Collider is the first accelerator that produces both particles in sufficient quantities for us to study their interactions directly in a lab setting. I will outline the latest results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC exploring this sector of fundamental physics.