PHOTON LINEAR COLLIDERS AS ALADDIN LAMP - NOVEL PROBES OF QCD IN T(T)OVER-BAR PHYSICS

S-wave and P-wave production cross sections of top quarks in the threshold region are obtained from perturbative QCD in terms of m(t), GAMMA(t) and alpha(S). S-wave production is described in terms of the Green function for the ttBAR system whereas P-wave production depends on the second space derivatives of the ttBAR Green function. We show by explicit calculation that those relativistic corrections that a priori could affect specifically the non-S-wave production are quite insignificant if top decays mainly like t --> bW or t --> bH with H denoting a charge Higgs state. A comparison of the S-wave and P-wave case thus provides a novel probe of QCD as it affects top dynamics. Collisions of polarized photons off each other allow us to extract separately the S-wave and P-wave production cross section. Such polarized photon beams can be generated by Compton backscattering laser light off polarized electron and positron beams.