THE SCIENCES 10 Years of the Higgs Boson: How Far Have We Come, and What Next? | Technidiya
THE SCIENCES 10 Years of the Higgs Boson: How Far Have We Come, and What Next?
On this day ten years ago, physicists at the largest physics experiment in the world said that they had found the Higgs boson. The finding of this subatomic particle supported the existence of the Higgs field, an energy field that permeates the universe and imparts mass to subatomic particles.
The existence of the Higgs boson serves as evidence for the Higgs mechanism, which was first predicted in the 1960s. Thus, tremendous excitement and celebration followed the discovery of the particle, which marked the end of a significant branch of physics research after many decades.
But it only increased the number of unanswered questions.
Today's physicists must make important choices about the purpose and cost of their upcoming experiments based on the problems they would like to have addressed and the methods they would prefer to use. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-km long tube in which protons are accelerated with the aid of extremely powerful magnets to nearly the speed of light and smashed head on, was the enormous device that assisted physicists in discovering the Higgs boson. Two detectors on the collider, ATLAS and CMS, look for evidence of the Higgs boson in the debris left behind by these collisions.
Through the Higgs mechanism, the Higgs field provides subatomic particles mass. In 1964, three different groups independently predicted that the mechanism would exist. The only member of one of these teams was the British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs. Robert Brout and François Englert were in the first group, and Gerald Guralnik, C.R. Hagen, and Tom Kibble were in the second.
Although Peter Higgs has stated that he prefers to use the name "Anderson-Brout-Englert-Guralnik-Hagen-Higgs-Kibble-t Hooft mechanism," most people refer to the mechanism as the "Higgs mechanism." Both "Anderson" and "t Hooft" refer to Gerardus 't Hooft and Philip Warren Anderson, respectively.
Peter Higgs and François Englert received the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics following the particle's discovery.
The electromagnetic energy field is thought to be excited by a particle known as a photon. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field in a similar manner. The strength of the Higgs boson's interaction with a particle is inversely proportional to the mass of the particle. For instance, the top quark interacts most strongly with the Higgs boson, making it the heaviest elementary particle that is currently understood. A particle will be lighter the weaker the interaction with the Higgs boson is.
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(Remember that the Higgs mechanism only accounts for the mass of elementary particles. Only one of the possible sources for the mass of composite particles, such as protons and neutrons, is the masses of their constituent particles.However, based on ten years' worth of data from the LHC, scientists have so far focused more on the interactions of the Higgs boson with heavier particles, such as electrons and positrons, than with lighter particles. To understand how the Higgs boson partners with itself and acquires its own mass, physicists must also conduct further research in this area.
Contrary to countless erroneous pseudoscientific articles that have appeared in the mainstream media since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the term "god particle" does not refer to the particle, which is frequently referred to as such. The term "goddamn particle," which physicist Leon Lederman used to describe the Higgs boson in 1993 because it was proving to be so difficult to locate, has been modified to refer to this particle.
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The LHC is a truly mind-blowing device, still the largest science experiment in the world 12 years after it began operation. However, the discovery of the Higgs boson is still the most notable achievement of the LHC. Fair enough, the LHC has supported many incremental discoveries, helped certain discoveries become more precise, and invalidated or modified others. Additionally, the machine has produced contradictory findings that have limited a number of theoretical predictions.
For instance, we are unsure of what dark matter is. Certain features of dark matter particles are predicted by various theories. Then, at various energies, physicists at the LHC search for signs of these particles in their detectors. (The energy at which a particle is identified is significant since it correlates with the particle's mass and suggests the possible decay products.)
The LHC hasn't discovered any proof of such particles to date. This indicates that, while dark matter particles may exist, they may not exist at the energy and other circumstances that the LHC searched for them.
The mass of the Higgs boson, which is significantly heavier than Higgs et al. expected, is another equally significant issue. Why? Another comparable issue exists. The Standard Model is the current set of laws that physicists use to comprehend the characteristics of subatomic particles. Additionally, it asserts that the Higgs boson's mass is unstable and might one day shift dramatically, with disastrous ramifications for the universe (and mystery also related to the mass of an unusual particle called the top quark). Actually, could it?
Both of these issues have significant ramifications for our comprehension of the cosmos, and they also raise the possibility that the Standard Model may be inaccurate or lacking in some respects. But we are unsure of how.
Supersymmetry is one solution to these issues that is often used. According to this theory, each matter particle has a corresponding force particle, and vice versa. Supersymmetric partners are these oppositely charged particles. If they were discovered, the mathematics governing the current particle laws would change in a way that would shed light on why the mass of the Higgs boson is what it is.
Many physicists anticipated that the LHC would discover supersymmetric partners, but the data hasn't turned up anything yet. A UK representative for one of the LHC collaborations was moved by one such disappointing finding to tell the BBC in 2012 that "Supersymmetry may not be dead, but these current results have certainly put it into hospital."
Although the outcome wasn't favourable, that doesn't imply it wasn't instructive.
Periodic improvements to the LHC and its detectors increase their sensitivity, resolution, timing, collision output, etc. The LHC reopened on April 22 following the most recent round of improvements, which started in December 2018. The following upgrading cycle will take place in 2026.
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A "run" is the time frame during which the LHC gathers data in between upgrades. There is so much data generated during each run that physicists (using computers) cannot process it all during that particular run. Many of them are still sorting through the data from earlier runs in search of intriguing findings.There are many questions that remain unanswered about the Higgs boson itself. Three categories can be drawn from them, respectively:
* Knowledge we now possess but need to improve upon - For instance, we have only examined the Higgs boson's interactions with leptons and quarks up to a 5 percent level of precision. This isn't sufficient; we require much more exact data since there is a chance that, with greater precision, the observed numbers differ from those predicted by theory. This could suggest, for instance, that the Higgs boson is not a basic particle but rather is composed of lesser particles, according to one theory.
Is there only one "kind" of Higgs boson, which is something we still don't know but anticipate to find out? What is the interaction between two Higgs bosons? How do lighter particles and the Higgs boson interact? Does the decay of a Higgs boson adhere to or defy accepted physics? Exist any degradation pathways that we haven't yet discovered? Why is the mass of the Higgs boson so much less than predicted by scientists' calculations?
* Other puzzles, like as why matter predominates over antimatter in our universe, can be explained by the Higgs boson. Describe dark matter. What caused cosmic inflation?
The search for the answers to any of these issues by itself does not make them immune to scepticism. As with the discovery of the Higgs boson, fresh knowledge could shed new light on existing concerns and raise other, perhaps more crucial ones.
The logical next step in this approach is to upgrade the LHC, which is already planned. Later, it will be necessary to discover means to examine the interactions of the Higgs boson with particles that cannot be created in large enough quantities during LHC collisions.
Because of this, even though the LHC and its data will continue to operate for at least another two decades and produce a wealth of information that will allow physicists to refine their current measurements, physicists and others have begun to consider what kind of machine they should construct in the future, one that can shed light on the Higgs boson's interaction with other particles. They begin to plan now because it can take up to ten years to create and construct devices of this size and sophistication.
At least following a series of (very) public debates just before the outbreak, there are already three leading candidates. Two of them have a similar design and intended use, but they differ in terms of strength and position.
China and CERN, the European research centre that now houses the LHC, have both suggested building circular colliders that are similar to the LHC but bigger and more potent.
The Future Circular Collider is the name of CERN's proposal (FCC). Compared to the LHC's beam pipe, which is 27 km long, it will be 100 km long and cost about $15 billion to construct. Prior to the epidemic, CERN had predicted that the FCC may go "online" by 2050.
China's proposal calls for the $5 billion construction of the Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC). Compared to the FCC, it will be able to attain lower collision energies. China had previously stated that it may construct this machine by 2022.
The International Linear Collider (ILC), created by a global partnership, is the third top contender. It will consist of a tube that is around 30 km long and will accelerate two different types of particles from its two ends in a straight line before colliding with them. Before Japanese scientists expressed reservations about how the government would divide the expense of building and maintaining the machine with other nations, it was anticipated that the machine would be located in Japan.
The Compact Linear Collider is a different machine design that physicists are considering.
Contrary to the LHC, which would smash protons with protons, the FCC, the CEPC, and the ILC all want to smash electrons with positrons. As composite particles made up of quarks and gluons, protons have exceedingly noisy collision data that necessitates extensive modelling and filtering to make sense of. On the other hand, since both electrons and protons are elementary particles, their collisions are thought to be "cleaner" and more suited for study.
Detectors can analyse the Higgs bosons that are produced by both kinds of collisions. However, accelerating electrons and positrons to a certain velocity in a circular device requires more energy than accelerating protons to the same velocity.
However, not all scientists concur that a larger machine is necessary to understand the Higgs boson, the existence of supersymmetric partners, and to investigate other issues. Some have argued that we shouldn't invest so much money on a single, large research unless physicists can be more certain of what they can or can't find. Even others have come up with justifications for and against this claim.
Matthew Strassler, a theoretical physicist, has outlined two justifications for developing a larger collider than the LHC on his blog. Understanding the "structure" of the Standard Model is relevant to both of them. A few criticisms of the notion were also noted by Strassler, such as the potential carbon impact of the increased power demand and the capex/opex of operating a larger machine.
Another counterargument is that there is no assurance that new particles will be discovered in a particle accelerator even 10 times as powerful as the Large Hadron Collider.
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Others have suggested that the money "saved" by forgoing the construction of a larger particle accelerator should instead go toward several smaller projects, but this is not really feasible. The funding for collider construction frequently comes from various nations over a long period of time, not just one. A significant portion of the value is also "frozen" in manufacturing and research contracts and cannot be changed into usable money immediately.Second, at least one historical instance has demonstrated that when a government cancels a significant physics project, it does not designate the'saved' funds for more physics initiatives but instead uses them for whatever other priorities the government considers important.
However, physicists require an increasing amount of data for their Higgs boson investigation. The LHC's and its forerunners' archives continue to produce a tonne of data. They might also determine that they require a different machine than the LHC at the moment, perhaps even a brand-new one, one that can explain why our universe is the way it is by revealing more about the fundamental particle.
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