A quark (from within a proton) and an antiquark (from an antiproton) colliding at high energy can annihilate to produce a top quark and a top antiquark, which then decay into other particles.
Frame 1: A quark from a proton and an anti-quark from an anti-proton rush to meet each other. Frame 2: These quarks collide and annihilate .... Frame 3: ... into virtual gluons. Frame 4: A top and antitop quark emerge from the gluon cloud. Frame 5: These quarks begin moving apart, stretching the color force field (gluon field) between them.
Frame 6: Before the top quark and antiquark have moved very far, they decay into a bottom and antibottom quark (respectively) with the emission of W force carrier particles. Frame 7: The new bottom quark and antibottom quark rebound away from the emitted W force carrier particles.
Frame 8: An electron and neutrino emerge from the virtual W- boson, and an up quark and down antiquark emerge from the virtual W+ boson. Frame 9: The bottom quark and bottom antiquark, electron, neutrino, up quark, and down antiquark all move away from one another.
The intermediate stages of this process occur in less than almost a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second, and are not observable.
You can see this as an ANIMATION if you are using Netscape.
 |
|
