SINGLE TOP QUARKS AT THE FERMILAB-TEVATRON

We present a calculation of the single top quark cross section for pro ton-antiproton interactions with root s = 1.8 TeV at the Fermilab Teva tron collider. We examine the effects of the top quark mass, parton di stribution functions, QCD scale, and collision energy, on each of the component production mechanisms, and study the kinematic distributions for standard model electroweak production. At the upgraded Tevatron w ith root s = 2.0 TeV and high luminosity, it will be possible to test the nature of the Wtb coupling using single top quark production. We e stimate the sensitivity to measure the single top quark cross section, and thus to directly measure V-tb and the top quark partial width. We show what happens to the V-tb measurement when an anomalous (V+A) com ponent is added to the Wtb coupling, and how the top quark polarizatio n affects the kinematic distributions.