Producing Top Quark & Anti-Top Quark: How Much Energy?

[eden2291]

Homework Statement

Consider a proton and antiproton collision. The goal is to produce a top quark and anti-top quark pair.

A top quark has a mass of 174 GeV/c²

How much energy is required in the center of mass frame to produce the combination?

The Attempt at a Solution

I'm somewhat utterly stumped. Obviously, the problem deals with a collision (I'd assume inelastic since the pair derived from the collision is a single mass?) in which relativistic principles need to be taken into consideration.

So, my feeble initial attempt is to find the initial versus final mass, wherein:
M_initial=2(proton mass)
M_final=2(top-quark mass)

And then compensate for the increase in energy by finding the kinetic energy of the colliding protons. But again, this is little more than a guess.

THANKS FOR THE HELP!

 

[fzero]

Also posted here: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=490413 Please don't double post the same questions, it just wastes peoples' time.