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. 2004 Jun 10;429(6992):638-42.
doi: 10.1038/nature02589.

A precision measurement of the mass of the top quark

V M Abazov  1 , B Abbott, A Abdesselam, M Abolins, V Abramov, B S Acharya, D L Adams, M Adams, S N Ahmed, G D Alexeev, A Alton, G A Alves, Y Arnoud, C Avila, V V Babintsev, L Babukhadia, T C Bacon, A Baden, S Baffioni, B Baldin, P W Balm, S Banerjee, E Barberis, P Baringer, J Barreto, J F Bartlett, U Bassler, D Bauer, A Bean, F Beaudette, M Begel, A Belyaev, S B Beri, G Bernardi, I Bertram, A Besson, R Beuselinck, V A Bezzubov, P C Bhat, V Bhatnagar, M Bhattacharjee, G Blazey, F Blekman, S Blessing, A Boehnlein, N I Bojko, T A Bolton, F Borcherding, K Bos, T Bose, A Brandt, G Briskin, R Brock, G Brooijmans, A Bross, D Buchholz, M Buehler, V Buescher, V S Burtovoi, J M Butler, F Canelli, W Carvalho, D Casey, H Castilla-Valdez, D Chakraborty, K M Chan, S V Chekulaev, D K Cho, S Choi, S Chopra, D Claes, A R Clark, B Connolly, W E Cooper, D Coppage, S Crépé-Renaudin, M A C Cummings, D Cutts, H Da Motta, G A Davis, K De, S J De Jong, M Demarteau, R Demina, P Demine, D Denisov, S P Denisov, S Desai, H T Diehl, M Diesburg, S Doulas, L V Dudko, L Duflot, S R Dugad, A Duperrin, A Dyshkant, D Edmunds, J Ellison, J T Eltzroth, V D Elvira, R Engelmann, S Eno, G Eppley, P Ermolov, O V Eroshin, J Estrada, H Evans, V N Evdokimov, T Ferbel, F Filthaut, H E Fisk, M Fortner, H Fox, S Fu, S Fuess, E Gallas, A N Galyaev, M Gao, V Gavrilov, R J Genik 2nd, K Genser, C E Gerber, Y Gershtein, G Ginther, B Gómez, P I Goncharov, K Gounder, A Goussiou, P D Grannis, H Greenlee, Z D Greenwood, S Grinstein, L Groer, S Grünendahl, M W Grünewald, S N Gurzhiev, G Gutierrez, P Gutierrez, N J Hadley, H Haggerty, S Hagopian, V Hagopian, R E Hall, C Han, S Hansen, J M Hauptman, C Hebert, D Hedin, J M Heinmiller, A P Heinson, U Heintz, M D Hildreth, R Hirosky, J D Hobbs, B Hoeneisen, J Huang, Y Huang, I Iashvili, R Illingworth, A S Ito, M Jaffré, S Jain, R Jesik, K Johns, M Johnson, A Jonckheere, H Jöstlein, A Juste, W Kahl, S Kahn, E Kajfasz, A M Kalinin, D Karmanov, D Karmgard, R Kehoe, S Kesisoglou, A Khanov, A Kharchilava, B Klima, J M Kohli, A V Kostritskiy, J Kotcher, B Kothari, A V Kozelov, E A Kozlovsky, J Krane, M R Krishnaswamy, P Krivkova, S Krzywdzinski, M Kubantsev, S Kuleshov, Y Kulik, S Kunori, A Kupco, V E Kuznetsov, G Landsberg, W M Lee, A Leflat, F Lehner, C Leonidopoulos, J Li, Q Z Li, J G R Lima, D Lincoln, S L Linn, J Linnemann, R Lipton, A Lucotte, L Lueking, C Lundstedt, C Luo, A K A Maciel, R J Madaras, V L Malyshev, V Manankov, H S Mao, T Marshall, M I Martin, S E K Mattingly, A A Mayorov, R McCarthy, T McMahon, H L Melanson, A Melnitchouk, A Merkin, K W Merritt, C Miao, H Miettinen, D Mihalcea, N Mokhov, N K Mondal, H E Montgomery, R W Moore, Y D Mutaf, E Nagy, M Narain, V S Narasimham, N A Naumann, H A Neal, J P Negret, S Nelson, A Nomerotski, T Nunnemann, D O'Neil, V Oguri, N Oshima, P Padley, K Papageorgiou, N Parashar, R Partridge, N Parua, A Patwa, O Peters, P Pétroff, R Piegaia, B G Pope, H B Prosper, S Protopopescu, M B Przybycien, J Qian, S Rajagopalan, P A Rapidis, N W Reay, S Reucroft, M Ridel, M Rijssenbeek, F Rizatdinova, T Rockwell, C Royon, P Rubinov, R Ruchti, B M Sabirov, G Sajot, A Santoro, L Sawyer, R D Schamberger, H Schellman, A Schwartzman, E Shabalina, R K Shivpuri, D Shpakov, M Shupe, R A Sidwell, V Simak, V Sirotenko, P Slattery, R P Smith, G R Snow, J Snow, S Snyder, J Solomon, Y Song, V Sorín, M Sosebee, N Sotnikova, K Soustruznik, M Souza, N R Stanton, G Steinbrück, D Stoker, V Stolin, A Stone, D A Stoyanova, M A Strang, M Strauss, M Strovink, L Stutte, A Sznajder, M Talby, W Taylor, S Tentindo-Repond, T G Trippe, A S Turcot, P M Tuts, R Van Kooten, V Vaniev, N Varelas, F Villeneuve-Seguier, A A Volkov, A P Vorobiev, H D Wahl, Z-M Wang, J Warchol, G Watts, M Wayne, H Weerts, A White, D Whiteson, D A Wijngaarden, S Willis, S J Wimpenny, J Womersley, D R Wood, Q Xu, R Yamada, T Yasuda, Y A Yatsunenko, K Yip, J Yu, M Zanabria, X Zhang, B Zhou, Z Zhou, M Zielinski, D Zieminska, A Zieminski, V Zutshi, E G Zverev, A Zylberstejn; DØ Collaboration
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Free article

A precision measurement of the mass of the top quark

V M Abazov et al. Nature. .
Free article

Abstract

The standard model of particle physics contains parameters--such as particle masses--whose origins are still unknown and which cannot be predicted, but whose values are constrained through their interactions. In particular, the masses of the top quark (M(t)) and W boson (M(W)) constrain the mass of the long-hypothesized, but thus far not observed, Higgs boson. A precise measurement of M(t) can therefore indicate where to look for the Higgs, and indeed whether the hypothesis of a standard model Higgs is consistent with experimental data. As top quarks are produced in pairs and decay in only about 10(-24) s into various final states, reconstructing their masses from their decay products is very challenging. Here we report a technique that extracts more information from each top-quark event and yields a greatly improved precision (of +/- 5.3 GeV/c2) when compared to previous measurements. When our new result is combined with our published measurement in a complementary decay mode and with the only other measurements available, the new world average for M(t) becomes 178.0 +/- 4.3 GeV/c2. As a result, the most likely Higgs mass increases from the experimentally excluded value of 96 to 117 GeV/c2, which is beyond current experimental sensitivity. The upper limit on the Higgs mass at the 95% confidence level is raised from 219 to 251 GeV/c2.

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