Top Quark

Most massive of all observed elementary particles, decaying before it can ever form a bound hadron.

Core Principles & Analysis

• Discovered in 1995 by the CDF and DØ experiments at Fermilab's Tevatron.
• Decays in about 5 × 10⁻²⁵ seconds, too quickly to form hadrons.
• Its enormous mass gives it the strongest coupling to the Higgs field of any known particle.

Specifications & Metrics

• MASS: 172.6 ± 0.27 GeV/c²
• SPIN: 1/2
• SYMBOL: t
• DECAY WIDTH: 1.42 +0.19 −0.15 GeV
• PDG ID: Q007
• PDG EDITION: PDG 2026
• CHARGE: +2/3 e

Principal Decay Modes

• t → e nu_e b — 11.10 ± 0.30%
• t → mu nu_mu b — 11.40 ± 0.20%
• t → tau nu_tau b — 10.7 ± 0.5%
• t → q qbar b — 66.5 ± 1.4%

Branching fractions: Particle Data Group, 2026 edition (CC BY 4.0).

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