Chapter 4: The Road to the Top

By the late 1980s, the main target of the CDF experiment had declaredly become the observation of the last quark still on the loose, the top. Yet, the road to the discovery of the top quark proved much longer and more difficult than anticipated, because of the unexpectedly large mass of that particle. The production of a heavy top quark was a quite rare outcome even for the very high energy of the Tevatron collisions; as a result, the collection of a significant number of signal events took longer than anticipated. In addition, the tools and the analysis strategies deployed by the early searches were inadequate, since they targeted a quark lighter than the W boson, which would display a phenomenology quite different from that of a heavier object. Those studies yielded a string of negative results. Hence, in spite of the great successes that the CDF experiment was reaping with the study of other physics processes, the general feeling was a mix of disappointment and frustration. The table was set and dinner was ready, but the VIP was not showing up!