Toponium at the LHC: a new frontier in top-quark physics
Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve)
The top quark, the heaviest known elementary particle, has long been thought unable to form bound states. However, intriguing hints in recent LHC data suggest that toponium, a short-lived quasi-bound state of a top-antitop pair, might have left observable traces in data and perhaps even been observed for the first time. In this talk, I will discuss why toponium provides a unique laboratory for studying the strong interaction in the non-relativistic regime, how modern techniques allow us to incorporate bound-state effects into state-of-the-art collider simulations, and which experimental signatures could reveal the presence of toponium in present and future LHC data. Finally, I will highlight recent results, ongoing searches and the exciting prospects for using toponium as a new window into top-quark physics.