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I keep reading the same phrase about the very short life time of the top quark:

Because the t-quark decays on a shorter than the characteristic QCD interaction-time it cannot hadronize. Therefore it give to possibility to be seen as a bare quark.

I cannot find any more information beyond this simple phrase. There are however a few things that I would like to seen cleared out (sorry for the naive questions) :

  • The first question is simple: I don't understand why this offers to opportunity to see a bare quark, since this quark decays that fast it must be very difficult te see it...
  • A bare quark?? I thought this was ruled to see colorful particles?
dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
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Anne O'Nyme
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1 Answers1

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I too see this often, @QMechanic.

See, for example, Griffiths, Introduction to Elementary Particles, pg 47.

By this they mean that the time it would take for signals to cross the 'length' of a typical hardon is much longer than the time it takes for a top (truth!) quark to decay.

Since we assume cuasility, we cannot have an interaction which propagats faster than the limiting speed.

Flint72
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