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London, July 24 (ANI): In what could be a first for Europe, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have presented several candidates for the heaviest sub-atomic particle known to science-a feat that could get them closer to the elusive Higgs boson, or “God particle”.

So far, the top quark particle has only been generated by one lab in the US.

Dr Arnaud Lucotte said the discovery could assist physicists in the hunt for the elusive Higgs boson, or “God particle”, reports the BBC.

Details of the top quark candidates were presented at a major particle physics conference in Paris.

Recently, several possible detections of top quarks have been made by the LHC’s Atlas and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments.

Atlas has seen nine collision events compatible with the top quark; CMS has observed 3-4 candidate events, reports the BBC.

But physicists stressed that more data was needed in order to support the conclusive observation of top quark production at the LHC.

The detection of the top quark would represent a small milestone for the European lab, which is making steady progress after the accident, which forced it to shut down for 14 months shortly after its “switch on” in 2008.

And the physics of the top quark is not well explained; studying it presents the opportunity to carry out important scientific work at the LHC.

In a presentation at the conference, particle physicist Tim Christiansen said events observed by the CMS experiment included one “striking” top quark candidate.

Dr Arnaud Lucotte, from the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) told BBC News that the top quark was “well coupled” to the Higgs boson.

In other words, there is thought to be a special interaction between these two particles.

If the Higgs boson exists in a form known as the charged Higgs, Lucotte explained, the top quark could be crucial to detecting it.

The findings were presented at The International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP). (ANI)