scholarly journals The Standard Model: how far can it go and how can we tell?

Author(s):  
J. M. Butterworth

The Standard Model of particle physics encapsulates our current best understanding of physics at the smallest distances and highest energies. It incorporates quantum electrodynamics (the quantized version of Maxwell’s electromagnetism) and the weak and strong interactions, and has survived unmodified for decades, save for the inclusion of non-zero neutrino masses after the observation of neutrino oscillations in the late 1990s. It describes a vast array of data over a wide range of energy scales. I review a selection of these successes, including the remarkably successful prediction of a new scalar boson, a qualitatively new kind of object observed in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider. New calculational techniques and experimental advances challenge the Standard Model across an ever-wider range of phenomena, now extending significantly above the electroweak symmetry breaking scale. I will outline some of the consequences of these new challenges, and briefly discuss what is still to be found. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Unifying physics and technology in light of Maxwell's equations’.

Author(s):  
Jean Zinn-Justin

The Standard Model (SM) 2020 of weak, electromagnetic and strong interactions, based on gauge symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking, describes all known fundamental interactions at the microscopic scale except gravity and, perhaps, interactions with dark matter. The SM model has been tested systematically in collider experiments, and in the case of strong interactions (quantum chromodynamics) also with numerical simulations. With the discovery in 2012 of the Higgs particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN), all particles of the SM have been identified, and most parameters have been measured. Still, the Higgs particle remains the most mysterious particle of the SM, since it is responsible for all the parameters of the SM except gauge couplings and since it leads to the fine-tuning problem. The discovery of its origin, and the precise study of its properties should be, in the future, one of the most important field of research in particle physics. Since we know now that the neutrinos have masses, the simplest extension of the SM implies Dirac neutrinos. With such a minimal modification, consistent so far (2020) with experimental data, the lepton and quark sectors have analogous structures: the lepton sector involves a mixing matrix, like the quark sector (three angles have been determined, the fourth charge conjugation parity (CP) violating angle is still unknown).


2019 ◽  
pp. 54-63
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee

The structure of matter and the forces that are important in particle physics are now understood in terms of the Standard Model, which is currently being tested at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Since the 1930s, physicists have used particle accelerators to investigate the structure of matter. Three forces are important in particle interactions, the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force. The weak and electromagnetic forces are now recognized as two components of a unified electroweak force. The strong force and the electroweak force act on a small collection of fundamental particles that include quarks, the subcomponents of protons, neutrons and many other particles. The final missing piece of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson, was discovered by the LHC in 2012.


Author(s):  
Maarten Boonekamp ◽  
Matthias Schott

With the huge success of quantum electrodynamics (QED) to describe electromagnetic interactions in nature, several attempts have been made to extend the concept of gauge theories to the other known fundamental interactions. It was realized in the late 1960s that electromagnetic and weak interactions can be described by a single unified gauge theory. In addition to the photon, the single mediator of the electromagnetic interaction, this theory predicted new, heavy particles responsible for the weak interaction, namely the W and the Z bosons. A scalar field, the Higgs field, was introduced to generate their mass. The discovery of the mediators of the weak interaction in 1983, at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), marked a breakthrough in fundamental physics and opened the door to more precise tests of the Standard Model. Subsequent measurements of the weak boson properties allowed the mass of the top quark and of the Higgs Boson to be predicted before their discovery. Nowadays, these measurements are used to further probe the consistency of the Standard Model, and to place constrains on theories attempting to answer still open questions in physics, such as the presence of dark matter in the universe or unification of the electroweak and strong interactions with gravity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 110-142
Author(s):  
Abdeljalil Habjia

In the context of particle physics, within the ATLAS and CMS experiments at large hadron collider (LHC), this work presents the discussion of the discovery of a particle compatible with the Higgs boson by the combination of several decay channels, with a mass of the order of 125.5 GeV. With increased statistics, that is the full set of data collected by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at LHC ( s1/2 = 7GeV and s1/2 = 8GeV ), the particle is also discovered individually in the channel h-->γγ with an observed significance of 5.2σ and 4.7σ, respectively. The analysis dedicated to the measurement of the mass mh and signal strength μ which is defined as the ratio of σ(pp --> h) X Br(h-->X) normalized to its Standard Model where X = WW*; ZZ*; γγ ; gg; ff. The combined results in h-->γγ channel gave the measurements: mh = 125:36 ± 0:37Gev, (μ = 1:17 ± 0:3) and the constraint on the width Γ(h) of the Higgs decay of 4.07 MeV at 95%CL. The spin study rejects the hypothesis of spin 2 at 99 %CL. The odd parity (spin parity 0- state) is excluded at more than 98%CL. Within the theoretical and experimental uncertainties accessible at the time of the analysis, all results: channels showing the excess with respect to the background-only hypothesis, measured mass and signal strength, couplings, quantum numbers (JPC), production modes, total and differential cross-sections, are compatible with the Standard Model Higgs boson at 95%CL. Although the Standard Model is one of the theories that have experienced the greatest number of successes to date, it is imperfect. The inability of this model to describe certain phenomena seems to suggest that it is only an approximation of a more general theory. Models beyond the Standard Model, such as 2HDM, MSSM or NMSSM, can compensate some of its limitations and postulate the existence of additional Higgs bosons.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Aleandro Nisati

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the highest energy machine for particle physics research ever built. In the years 2010–2012 this accelerator has collided protons to a centre-mass-energy up to 8 TeV (note that 1 TeV corresponds to the energy of about 1000 protons at rest; the mass of one proton is about 1.67×10–24 g). The events delivered by the LHC have been collected and analysed by four apparatuses placed alongside this machine. The search for the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model and the search for new particles and fields beyond this theory represent the most important points of the scientific programme of the LHC. In July 2012, the international collaborations ATLAS and CMS, consisting of more than 3000 physicists, announced the discovery of a new neutral particle with a mass of about 125 GeV, whose physics properties are compatible, within present experimental and theoretical uncertainties, to the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. This discovery represents a major milestone for particle physics, since it indicates that the hypothesized Higgs mechanism seems to be responsible for the masses of elementary particles, in particular W± and Z0 bosons, as well as fermions (leptons and quarks). The 2013 Physics Nobel Prize has been assigned to F. Englert and P. Higgs, ‘for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider’.


Author(s):  
G. Dissertori

Enormous efforts at accelerators and experiments all around the world have gone into the search for the long-sought Higgs boson, postulated almost five decades ago. This search has culminated in the discovery of a Higgs-like particle by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2012. Instead of describing this widely celebrated discovery, in this article I will rather focus on earlier attempts to discover the Higgs boson, or to constrain the range of possible masses by interpreting precise data in the context of the Standard Model of particle physics. In particular, I will focus on the experimental efforts carried out during the last two decades, at the Large Electron Positron collider, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, and the Tevatron collider, Fermilab, near Chicago, IL, USA.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (07) ◽  
pp. 1330015
Author(s):  
◽  
DOMIZIA ORESTANO

This document presents a brief overview of some of the experimental techniques employed by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the search for the Higgs boson predicted by the standard model (SM) of particle physics. The data and the statistical analyses that allowed in July 2012, only few days before this presentation at the Marcel Grossman Meeting, to firmly establish the observation of a new particle are described. The additional studies needed to check the consistency between the newly discovered particle and the Higgs boson are also discussed.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Zoltán Trócsányi ◽  
Adam Kardos ◽  
Giuseppe Bevilacqua

The spectacular physics results collected during the first two runs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) present compelling evidence that the Standard Model of Particle Physics describes nature with a very high degree of accuracy [...]


Author(s):  
Gerald Gwinner ◽  
L A Orozco

Abstract Tests of the Standard Model of particle physics should be carried out over the widest possible range of energies. Here we present our plans and progress for an atomic parity non-conservation experiment using the heaviest alkali, francium (Z = 87), which has no stable isotope. Low-energy tests of this kind have sensitivity complementary to higher energy searches, e.g. at the Large Hadron Collider.


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