Title: New Physics: A View from the Top

Abstract:

Ten years after its discovery, the top quark remains the focus of a substantial research effort at the currently operating Tevatron experiments. This is because the top quark, with its large relative mass, plays a particularly important role in the Standard Model and many extensions to it. Many top quark measurements now being performed at the Tevatron are thus sensitive to new physics. Indeed, this is true of my own recent work which I will present. In particular, I will discuss a measurement of the top production cross-section in the dilepton final state performed at CDF, directly sensitive to a several supersymmetric hypotheses. I will also discuss measurements of the mass of the top quark which are indirectly sensitive to Higgs physics, highlighting a new technique which I have developed that employs the mean decay length of the b-hadrons from the top's decay to infer its mass.