![]() ![]() CERN wisely launched a strong R&D programme, which enabled fast progress on the detectors. Given the state of detector technology of the time, this seemed a formidable challenge. However, this high luminosity would mean that each interesting collision would be accompanied by tens of background collisions. Peter higgs full#This accelerator would probe the full possible mass range for the Higgs, provided that the luminosity was very high. ![]() In 1984, a few physicists and engineers at CERN were exploring the possibility of installing a proton-proton accelerator with a very high collision energy of 10-20 TeV in the same tunnel as LEP. Though LEP did not find the Higgs boson, it made significant headway in the search, determining that the mass should be larger than 114 GeV. The Large Electron-Positron collider (LEP), which operated at CERN from 1989 to 2000, was the first accelerator to have significant reach into the potential mass range of the Higgs boson. The accelerator, the experiments and the Higgs This particle was later called the Higgs boson and would become the most sought-after particle in all of particle physics. The mass of this particle was unknown, but researchers knew it should be lower than 1 TeV – a value well beyond the then conceivable limits of accelerators. Second, the new field itself would materialize in another particle. The BEH mechanism had several implications: first, that the weak interaction was mediated by heavy particles, namely the W and Z bosons, which were discovered at CERN in 1983. However, once the mass of a particle is measured, its interaction with the Higgs boson can be determined. These values are not predicted by current theories. The BEH mechanism implies that the values of the elementary particle masses are linked to how strongly each particle couples to the Higgs field. After the universe expanded and cooled, particles interacted with the Higgs field and this interaction gave them mass. Before this phase transition, all particles were massless and travelled at the speed of light. In the history of the universe, particles interacted with the Higgs field just 10 -12 seconds after the Big Bang. The photon, which carries the electromagnetic interaction, would remain massless. Particles that carry the weak interaction would acquire masses through their interaction with the Higgs field, as would all matter particles. Importantly, this structure ensures that the theory remains predictive at very high energy. The peculiarity of this mechanism is that it can give mass to elementary particles while retaining the nice structure of their original interactions. Independent efforts by Robert Brout and François Englert in Brussels, Peter Higgs at the University of Edinburgh, and others lead to a concrete model known as the Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism. In 1964, theorists proposed a solution to this puzzle. They had identified deep similarities between the structure of these two interactions, but a unified theory at the deeper level seemed to require that particles be massless even though real particles in nature have mass. In the early 1960s, physicists had a powerful theory of electromagnetic interactions and a descriptive model of the weak nuclear interaction – the force that is at play in many radioactive decays and in the reactions which make the Sun shine. ![]() In a sense, this mass is the essential quantity, which defines that at this place there is a particle rather than nothing. In Einstein’s celebrated formula E = mc 2, the “m” is the inertial mass of the particle. By “mass” we mean the inertial mass, which resists when we try to accelerate an object, rather than the gravitational mass, which is sensitive to gravity. The “Higgs mechanism,” which consists of the Higgs field and its corresponding Higgs boson, is said to give mass to elementary particles. Many questions in particle physics are related to the existence of particle mass. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |