The Large Hadron Collider: What the Higgs boson revealed to physicists.

summer 2012 is one for the books – the first Avengers movie has just hit theaters around the world, and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” is dominating the charts. And oh yeah, physicists across the ocean at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have just discovered a world-altering particle called the Higgs boson.

Theorized for decades leading up to its discovery on July 4, 2012, the Higgs boson is a subatomic particle that has the power to confirm or destroy the most comprehensive theory of physics to date, the Standard Model. As the LHC begins the process of destroying its third atom, scientists have taken steps to Natural to reflect on what a decade of Higgs research means for how we understand physics and the world it describes.

Giulia Zanderighi is director of the particle physics group at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and co-author of the perspective published this week in Natural on the Higgs warning. He told Backwards that CERN’s Higgs boson research is still investigating the edges of scientific knowledge.

“Each time the measurements become more precise, we can narrow down the allowable New Physics models,” Zanderighi said. “So we’re getting closer and closer to discovering the possibilities of physics outside the Standard Model.”

Here’s the background- The Higgs boson is just one of 17 particles that call the Standard Model House of particle physics. This hodgepodge of particles includes familiar faces such as electrons (classified as leptons and fermions) and lesser-known faces such as the W and Z bosons. Roughly speaking, Standard Model particles are the materials that make up matter (for example, atoms) or a type of particle called a boson that applies a force, such as electromagnetism or nuclear decay, to other particles.

Overall, the theory that explains the interactions between these particles is the best description of how the subatomic world works.

ATLAS particle detector at CERN. EThamPhoto/The Image Bank Not Released/Getty Images

The Higgs boson is the newest addition to the family. It fills in an important missing piece of the puzzle of forces by imparting mass to particles through something called the Higgs field, which has similarities to electromagnetic fields. Because it is responsible for imparting mass to particles, scientists are interested in not only confirming the Standard Model using the Higgs but also exploring “beyond” Standard Model science.

“The Higgs boson itself may represent new phenomena, including some that may be responsible for the dark matter in the universe,” CMS spokesman Luca Malgeri said in a statement.

What’s new – In a pair of papers published this week in Natural, the collaboration of ATLAS and CMS CERN has reported several new Higgs interactions based on data from the second detection which further confirms the Standard Model as we know it. From the trillions of collisions and the creation of millions of Higgs bosons, the team isolated a collection of interactions between the Higgs and particles such as upper and lower quarks, Z and W bosons, and tau leptons to ensure that they also receive mass from the Higgs field.

Thanks to improvements in analytical instruments and techniques over the last decade, Zanderighi says the public is “very confident” in these results, despite the unavoidable uncertainty in the calculations.

“This analysis is very difficult and sophisticated, but there are many tests and validation procedures,” Zanderighi said. “One important aspect of these results is that they were confirmed by at least two independent experiments – ATLAS and CMS.”

What’s next – If you thought the first decade of the Higgs data was impressive, scientists say you should stick to the next decade. LHC’s Run 3 alone will generate 10x more Higgs bosons than previous runs and give scientists a great opportunity to investigate more Higgs interactions to confirm Standard Model predictions, including interactions with light particles (such as muons) and self-interactions between Higgs bosons.

Whether or not these observations will match the predictions of the Standard Model or reveal hidden new physics remains to be seen, but regardless of the next decade the Higgs research will surely change physics as we know it.

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