TESTING THE STANDARD MODEL IN AND SINGLE TOP PRODUCTION AT THE LHC

The top quark is the heaviest and the least studied quark of the Standard Model (SM). At the LHC several millions of top quarks will be produced every year through pair and single top production. Precision tests of the SM performed by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations (top mass, cross sections, top spin correlations and W polarization) are reviewed together with the studies of the sensitivity to new physics beyond the SM (anomalous couplings and FCNC decays) using and single top events.