Higgs boson

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Candidate Higgs Events in ATLAS and CMS

Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, first theorized in 1964 by physicists including Peter Higgs, François Englert, and others. It plays a crucial role in explaining the mass of other elementary particles through the Higgs mechanism. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by the ATLAS and CMS experiments was announced in 2012, a landmark achievement in particle physics.

Overview

The Higgs boson is often referred to as the "God particle," a nickname popularized by the media, stemming from the book "The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?" by Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi. However, this moniker is not favored by the scientific community due to its sensational nature. The particle's existence provides evidence for the Higgs field, an energy field that permeates the universe. According to the Standard Model, particles acquire mass by interacting with this field, with the Higgs boson being a quantum excitation of the field itself.

Discovery

The search for the Higgs boson was a decades-long endeavor, culminating in its discovery in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. This discovery was a pivotal moment in physics, confirming a key component of the Standard Model. The significance of this achievement was recognized with the awarding of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to François Englert and Peter Higgs for their theoretical predictions.

Properties

The Higgs boson is a boson, a type of particle that follows Bose-Einstein statistics. Unlike other elementary particles, it has no spin, charge, or color charge. It is also highly unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately after its creation. The mass of the Higgs boson, as measured by the LHC experiments, is about 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), which is roughly 133 times the mass of a proton.

Significance

The discovery of the Higgs boson has profound implications for our understanding of the universe. It confirms the existence of the Higgs field, providing a mechanism for particles to acquire mass. This discovery has also opened up new avenues of research in particle physics, including studies on the properties of the Higgs boson itself and its interactions with other particles. Furthermore, it has implications for the unification of forces and the development of new theories beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry and theories involving extra dimensions.

Future Research

The study of the Higgs boson is ongoing, with physicists at the LHC and future colliders aiming to measure its properties with greater precision. These studies include its decay channels, couplings to other particles, and its potential role in phenomena beyond the Standard Model. Understanding the Higgs boson more deeply could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the fundamental forces of nature and the early universe.