The top quark: a "charged" topic

Since the top quark's discovery in 1995, there have been several measurements of the top quark's mass and pair production cross section.
Due to this quark's special role in electroweak symmetry breaking, properties such as its charge should also be measured. I will give a brief introduction about the top quark in the context of high energy physics and present the first CDF measurement of the top quark's charge using its decay products from a sample of ~1 fb-1 of data collected with the CDFII detector at Fermilab's Tevatron collider. The standard model predicts the top quark charge to be +2/3 but alternative theories allow a fourth generation exotic quark with a charge of -4/3. The CDF data provides more insight into the true nature of the top quark and its impact on the standard model.