“The top quark, in particular, is a very promising probe of QGP’s evolution over time. As the heaviest known elementary particle, the top quark decays into other particles an order of magnitude faster than the time needed to form QGP,” the researchers note.
“The delay between the collision and the top quark’s decay products interacting with the QGP could serve as a ‘time marker’, offering a unique opportunity to study the QGP’s temporal dynamics,” they added.
To first detect top quarks, researchers ran the large hadron collider (LHC) and conducted an experiment involving the collision of lead (Pb) ions at 5.02 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per nucleon pair energy.