CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has revealed a rare phenomenon in the behavior of top quarks, which are the heaviest and shortest-lived particles in the universe. Researchers observed that these particles can momentarily pair up with their antimatter counterparts to form a quasi-bound state called toponium. This discovery, confirmed by both CMS and ATLAS experiments, could be a major milestone in particle physics.
Top quarks were thought to be solitary particles due to their extreme instability, but the observation of an excess of top quark-antiquark pairs at low energies suggests that they can interact briefly with each other. The formation of toponium is mediated by gluons, which are the messengers of the strong nuclear force.
The CMS experiment measured a production rate of 8.8 picobarns for the top quark-antiquark excess, surpassing the five-sigma threshold required for a discovery in particle physics. ATLAS confirmed the finding with a nearly identical cross section of 9.0±1.3 picobarns.
This discovery is significant because it challenges our understanding of the strong nuclear force and could lead to new insights into the nature of quarks and gluons. Further research, including complex theoretical calculations using quantum chromodynamics (QCD), will be needed to fully understand this phenomenon.
Source: https://interestingengineering.com/science/particle-accelerator-reveals-rare-top-quark-dance