SEARCH FOR THE TOP-QUARK IN THE HADRONIC DECAY CHANNEL

The possibility of discovering the top quark and measuring its mass at the Fermilab Tevatron collider is studied for the pure hadronic decay channel, that is, the six jet final state. The most important aspects of a generic detector relevant for this study are included. By requir ing tagging of a b-quark jet and applying cuts on the sphericity, apla narity, and summed scalar transverse energy of the jets we obtain an a cceptable signal-to-background ratio. In order to reduce the uncertain ty in the measured three jet invariant mass distribution due to energy smearing, kinematical fit techniques are used. With the above methods we conclude that a top quark with a mass up to 180 GeV can be observe d in the hadronic decay mode at the Tevatron with an integrated lumino sity of 100 pb(-1).