Properties and signatures of heavy quarks

Abstract

Recent theoretical speculation concerning the mass of the $t$ quark, the charge-$\frac{2}{3}$ partner of the quark bound in $\Upsilon$, put it, as well as possible heavier doublets, outside the reach of existing $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ machines. If this speculation is correct, hadron colliders will provide the only means of studying new flavors in the near future. We study (i) the properties of heavy quarks and their bound states, emphasizing the importance of weak effects when $2M_q\gtrsim M_Z$ (mass of the intermediate boson), and (ii) their various experimental signatures in hadronic collisions. Contrary to what one might suspect from past experience with charmed particles, we anticipate that the associated production (and not the $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ or ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ invariant mass of the quark-antiquark bound state) will provide the most prominent signature via the study of anomalous $e\mu$ events. We expect the background to any leptonic signature to be severe, suggesting the requirement of simultaneous detection of hadrons. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.20.2862 © 1979 The American Physical Society