Dr Andrea Knue - Elusive romance of top-quark pairs observed at the LHC

Wednesday 27 May 2026, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/London

Online Only

https://cern.zoom.us/j/67501511814?pwd=4RlJLpbhXENmVQVLaPAbMuweQ5xIwM.1

ONLINE ONLY - NO IN PERSON MEETING ROOM

About the speaker: 

I have done my PhD at the University of Goettingen in 2013 and then went with a Feodor-Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander-van-Humboldt foundation to the University of Glasgow.

From 2016-2017, I was working for the Max-Planck institute in Munich, and in Summer 2017 I went to the University of Freiburg, where I did my habilitation in 2022.

From July 2022 -- September 2024 I was leading the ATLAS top group. 

Since 2023 I am working for the University in Dortmund.

14:00 → 15:00 Elusive romance of top-quark pairs observed at the LHC

The top quark is the heaviest elementary particle known to date.
With this very large mass come interesting consequences, like its extremely short lifetime.
Unlike other quarks, which can form bound states, the top quarks lifetime does not allow for a stable bond.
If two top quarks are produced almost at rest however, they can briefly exchange gluons before they then decay individually.
This pseudo-bound state was already predicted in 1987, before the top quark was even discovered.
It was thought to be impossible to measure this state at the LHC, as it constitutes less than 1% of the total production rate
and is difficult to see in the data. With improved analysis techniques and theoretical predictions however,
the CMS and ATLAS experiments have recently observed an excess of data close to the production threshold.
This presentation will discuss these new measurements and shed some light on the fleeting connection between the two top quarks.

Convener: Dr Andrea Knue (Technische Universitaet Dortmund)