scholarly journals Brief history for the search and discovery of the Higgs particle – A personal perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (09) ◽  
pp. 1330027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sau Lan Wu

In 1964, a new particle was proposed by several groups to answer the question of where the masses of elementary particles come from; this particle is usually referred to as the Higgs particle or the Higgs boson. In July 2012, this Higgs particle was finally found experimentally, a feat accomplished by the ATLAS Collaboration and the CMS Collaboration using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is the purpose of this review to give my personal perspective on a brief history of the experimental search for this particle since the '80s and finally its discovery in 2012. Besides the early searches, those at the LEP collider at CERN, the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are described in some detail. This experimental discovery of the Higgs boson is often considered to be the most important advance in particle physics in the last half a century, and some of the possible implications are briefly discussed. This review is partially based on a talk presented by the author at the conference "Higgs Quo Vadis," Aspen Center for Physics, Aspen, CO, USA, March 10–15, 2013.

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (27) ◽  
pp. 1430062 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sau Lan Wu

In 1964, a new particle was proposed by several groups to answer the question of where the masses of elementary particles come from; this particle is usually referred to as the Higgs particle or the Higgs boson. In July 2012, this Higgs particle was finally found experimentally, a feat accomplished by the ATLAS Collaboration and the CMS Collaboration using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is the purpose of this review to give my personal perspective on a brief history of the experimental search for this particle since the '80s and finally its discovery in 2012. Besides the early searches, those at the LEP collider at CERN, the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are described in some detail. This experimental discovery of the Higgs boson is often considered to be one of the most important advances in particle physics in the last half a century, and some of the possible implications are briefly discussed. This review is based on a talk presented by the author at the conference "OCPA8 International Conference on Physics Education and Frontier Physics," the 8th Joint Meeting of Chinese Physicists Worldwide, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, June 23–27, 2014.


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’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 23-24
Author(s):  

A team of physicists from Hong Kong has now formally joined one of the most prestigious physics experiments in the world. Following a unanimous vote of approval today by its Collaboration Board, ATLAS has admitted the Hong Kong team as a member. The ATLAS Collaboration operates one of the largest particle detectors in the world, located at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's highest energy particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland. In 2012, the ATLAS team — along with the CMS Collaboration — co-discovered the Higgs boson, or so-called 'God Particle'. The gigantic but sensitive and precise ATLAS detector, together with the unprecedentedly high collision energy and luminosity of the LHC, make it possible to search for fundamentally new physics, such as dark matter, hidden extra dimensions, and supersymmetry — a proposed symmetry among elementary particles. The LHC is currently undergoing an upgrade, targeting a substantial increase in beam energy and intensity in a year's time. It is widely expected that the discovery of the Higgs boson is only the beginning of an era of new breakthroughs in fundamental physics. All these exciting opportunities are now opened up to scientists and students from Hong Kong.


2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (04) ◽  
pp. 1430004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dezső Horváth

The 40 years old Standard Model, the theory of particle physics, seems to describe all experimental data very well. All of its elementary particles were identified and studied apart from the Higgs boson until 2012. For decades, many experiments were built and operated searching for it, and finally, the two main experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, CMS and ATLAS, in 2012 observed a new particle with properties close to those predicted for the Higgs boson. In this paper, we outline the search story: the exclusion of the Higgs boson at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider, and its observation at LHC.


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.


2020 ◽  
pp. 263-309
Author(s):  
Peter Jenni ◽  
Tejinder S. Virdee

AbstractIn July 2012 the ATLAS and CMS experiments announced the discovery of a Higgs boson, confirming the conjecture put forward in the 1960’s. This article briefly traces the history of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, its impact on the elucidation of the standard model, the design and construction of the ATLAS and CMS experiments, and finally the discovery of the Higgs boson. The article outlines some of the challenges faced during the construction of the Large Hadron Collider and its experiments, and their operation and performance. In particular, recent results relating to the properties and couplings of the Higgs boson will be discussed as well future prospects at the LHC.


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