From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Via phys.org : “Exploring a new algorithm for reconstructing particles”

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]

Via

phys.org

9.28.22

Fig. 1

Schematic representation of the right-handed Cartesian coordinate system adopted to describe the detector. Credit: The European Physical Journal C (2022).

Fig. 2

Left: schematic representation of the detector longitudinal sampling structure. Right: transverse view of the last active layer. Different colors represent different materials: copper (orange), stainless steel and lead (gray), air (white) and active sensors made of silicon (black)

There are more instructive images in the science paper.

A team of researchers from CERN, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Staffordshire University have implemented a new algorithm for reconstructing particles at the Large Hadron Collider.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built which sits in a tunnel 100 meters underground at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva in Switzerland. It is the site of long-running experiments which enable physicists worldwide to learn more about the nature of the universe.

The project is part of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment [below] —one of seven installed experiments which uses detectors to analyze the particles produced by collisions in the accelerator.

The subject of a new academic paper published in European Physical Journal C [below], the project has been carried out ahead of the high luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider.

The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) project aims to crank up the performance of the LHC in order to increase the potential for discoveries after 2029. The HL-LHC will increase the number of proton-proton interactions in an event from 40 to 200.

Professor Raheel Nawaz, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Digital Transformation, at Staffordshire University, has supervised the research. He explained that “limiting the increase of computing resource consumption at large pileups is a necessary step for the success of the HL-LHC physics program and we are advocating the use of modern machine learning techniques to perform particle reconstruction as a possible solution to this problem.”

He added that “this project has been both a joy and a privilege to work on and is likely to dictate the future direction of research on particle reconstruction by using a more advanced AI-based solution.”

Dr. Jan Kieseler from the Experimental Physics Department at CERN added that “this is the first single-shot reconstruction of about 1,000 particles from and in an unprecedentedly challenging environment with 200 simultaneous interactions each proton-proton collision. Showing that this novel approach, combining dedicated graph neural network layers (GravNet) and training methods (Object Condensation), can be extended to such challenging tasks while staying within resource constraints represents an important milestone towards future particle reconstruction.”

Shah Rukh Qasim, leading this project as part of his Ph.D. at CERN and Manchester Metropolitan University, says that “the amount of progress we have made on this project in the last three years is truly remarkable. It was hard to imagine we would reach this milestone when we started.”

Professor Martin Jones, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive at Staffordshire University, added that “CERN is one of the world’s most respected centers for scientific research and I congratulate the researchers on this project which is effectively paving the way for even greater discoveries in years to come.”

“Artificial Intelligence is continuously evolving to benefit many different industries and to know that academics at Staffordshire University and elsewhere are contributing to the research behind such advancements is both exciting and significant.”

Science paper:
European Physical Journal C

See the full article here.

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Meet CERN in a variety of places:

Quantum Diaries

Cern Courier

The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), CERN’s second-largest accelerator. (Image: Julien Ordan/CERN).

THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

ATLAS

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS another view Image Claudia Marcelloni ATLAS CERN.

ALICE

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

CMS

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CMS.

LHCb

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

LHC

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube.

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

CERN SixTrack LHC particles.

OTHER PROJECTS AT CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AEGIS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALPHA Antimatter Factory.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALPHA-g Detector.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AMS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ASACUSA.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear] [ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATRAP.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Antiproton Decelerator.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AWAKE.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] BASE: Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] BASE instrument.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN] [CERN] BASE: Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CAST Axion Solar Telescope.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CLOUD.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] COMPASS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CRIS experiment.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] DIRAC.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] FASER experiment schematic.

CERN FASER is designed to study the interactions of high-energy neutrinos and search for new as-yet-undiscovered light and weakly interacting particles. Such particles are dominantly produced along the beam collision axis and may be long-lived particles, travelling hundreds of metres before decaying. The existence of such new particles is predicted by many models beyond the Standard Model that attempt to solve some of the biggest puzzles in physics, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of neutrino masses.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] GBAR.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ISOLDE Looking down into the ISOLDE experimental hall.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCf.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] The MoEDAL experiment- a new light on the high-energy frontier.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] NA62.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] NA64.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] n_TOF.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] TOTEM.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] UA9.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] The SPS’s new RF system.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Proto Dune.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] HiRadMat-High Radiation to Materials.

The SND@LHC experiment consists of an emulsion/tungsten target for neutrinos (yellow) interleaved with electronic tracking devices (grey), followed downstream by a detector (brown) to identify muons and measure the energy of the neutrinos. (Image: Antonio Crupano/SND@LHC)

From The University of Toronto (CA): “‘This is what physics is all about’:: U of T undergrads probe subatomic universe at CERN”

From The University of Toronto (CA)

9.9.22
Chris Sasaki

The Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS detector, where a team of more than 30 physicists from U of T, including students, post-doctoral researchers and faculty, have been leading members of a research collaboration (photo couresty of CERN)

Harsh Jaluka and Kelvin Leong – both undergraduate students from the University of Toronto – spent the summer living in Geneva and conducting research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most powerful particle accelerator ever built.

The two students were participants in the university’s Summer Abroad program, which provides students with opportunities to take courses in international locations where they gain invaluable experience.

For Leong, the experience brought him full circle.

“My interest in particle physics began 10 years ago when the Higgs boson was first discovered,” says the member of New College who is entering his fourth year of an astronomy and physics specialist program.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) ATLAS Higgs Event June 18, 2012.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)CMS Higgs Event May 27, 2012.

“It was such big news at the time – that’s what got me interested in particle physics in the first place.”

The Nobel Prize-winning discovery was made in 2012 with the ATLAS and CMS detectors on the Large Hadron Collider, which is located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS another view Image Claudia Marcelloni ATLAS CERN.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Compact Muon Solenoid Detector.

A lynchpin in the standard model of particle physics, the theory describing all matter and forces in the universe, the discovery of the Higgs boson was a long-sought confirmation of the theory explaining why some particles have mass and others do not.

Standard Model of Particle Physics, Quantum Diaries.

For years, a team of more than 30 physicists from U of T – including students, post-doctoral researchers and faculty – have been leading members of the groundbreaking ATLAS collaboration. The team includes Pekka Sinervo, a professor in the department of physics in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Physicists explore the subatomic realm by smashing particles together using the LHC. They then study what happens in those collisions using detectors like ATLAS and CMS. Typically, such experiments are used to confirm the existence of particles predicted by theory – for example, the Higgs boson. Other experiments measure the characteristics of the collisions and their fallout to see if they match theorists’ predictions.

“I was measuring the frequency of a rare event – the appearance from a collision of a massive particle called a top quark,” says Leong.

Jaluka, a member of Trinity College who is entering his third year of a math and physics specialist program, says he was looking at collisions in which a top quark and a Higgs boson are produced.

“Not only that, but we were looking for events in which the particles were ‘boosted’ – that is, when they had higher than normal energies and then decayed into other particles called hadrons,” he says.

Sinervo says the Summer Abroad program pays dividends for him as an instructor and for his students.

“It gives me an opportunity to work with outstanding students who have a strong interest in the physical sciences,” he says. “I enjoy the interaction with them and sharing my own interest and excitement in what we are doing at CERN.

“And the students see how research is done. They see there’s a lot of slogging, getting familiar with an experiment, understanding the tools we use – and then applying them to make progress on instrumentation or analysis of data. They also get a taste of what progress looks like in a fundamental research group.

“This is what physics is all about – not lectures and undergraduate labs.”

Jaluka says the summer program provided him with valuable career guidance.

“When you’re studying physics, the question is always whether to go into experimental or theoretical physics,” he says. “So this experience gave me a good idea what experimental physics looks like – what you do on a day-to-day basis. It’s been very helpful in thinking about my future career.”

When the students weren’t working, they took full advantage of living in Geneva. Jaluka explored the city on bicycle and took in the local culture. Leong, who had never been to Europe before, visited Bern, Lyon and other destinations.

“It was an amazing experience,” Leong says. “Working there really made me feel like I was contributing to physics research.”

“It was an incredible opportunity,” echoes Jaluka. “You get to spend two months working on the LHC, the most complex machine ever built. You get to do research and gain invaluable experience. You get to be in Switzerland, a beautiful country. So really, there were no drawbacks to this program. It was a win-win scenario.”

Conversations with Profs: Science Abroad Switzerland

See the full article here .

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The The University of Toronto (CA) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen’s Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King’s College, the oldest university in the province of Ontario.

Originally controlled by the Church of England, the university assumed its present name in 1850 upon becoming a secular institution.

As a collegiate university, it comprises eleven colleges each with substantial autonomy on financial and institutional affairs and significant differences in character and history. The university also operates two satellite campuses located in Scarborough and Mississauga.

University of Toronto has evolved into Canada’s leading institution of learning, discovery and knowledge creation. We are proud to be one of the world’s top research-intensive universities, driven to invent and innovate.

Our students have the opportunity to learn from and work with preeminent thought leaders through our multidisciplinary network of teaching and research faculty, alumni and partners.

The ideas, innovations and actions of more than 560,000 graduates continue to have a positive impact on the world.

Academically, the University of Toronto is noted for movements and curricula in literary criticism and communication theory, known collectively as the Toronto School.

The university was the birthplace of insulin and stem cell research, and was the site of the first electron microscope in North America; the identification of the first black hole Cygnus X-1; multi-touch technology, and the development of the theory of NP-completeness.

The university was one of several universities involved in early research of deep learning. It receives the most annual scientific research funding of any Canadian university and is one of two members of the Association of American Universities outside the United States, the other being McGill(CA).

The Varsity Blues are the athletic teams that represent the university in intercollegiate league matches, with ties to gridiron football, rowing and ice hockey. The earliest recorded instance of gridiron football occurred at University of Toronto’s University College in November 1861.

The university’s Hart House is an early example of the North American student centre, simultaneously serving cultural, intellectual, and recreational interests within its large Gothic-revival complex.

The University of Toronto has educated three Governors General of Canada, four Prime Ministers of Canada, three foreign leaders, and fourteen Justices of the Supreme Court. As of March 2019, ten Nobel laureates, five Turing Award winners, 94 Rhodes Scholars, and one Fields Medalist have been affiliated with the university.

Early history

The founding of a colonial college had long been the desire of John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada and founder of York, the colonial capital. As an University of Oxford (UK)-educated military commander who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, Simcoe believed a college was needed to counter the spread of republicanism from the United States. The Upper Canada Executive Committee recommended in 1798 that a college be established in York.

On March 15, 1827, a royal charter was formally issued by King George IV, proclaiming “from this time one College, with the style and privileges of a University … for the education of youth in the principles of the Christian Religion, and for their instruction in the various branches of Science and Literature … to continue for ever, to be called King’s College.” The granting of the charter was largely the result of intense lobbying by John Strachan, the influential Anglican Bishop of Toronto who took office as the college’s first president. The original three-storey Greek Revival school building was built on the present site of Queen’s Park.

Under Strachan’s stewardship, King’s College was a religious institution closely aligned with the Church of England and the British colonial elite, known as the Family Compact. Reformist politicians opposed the clergy’s control over colonial institutions and fought to have the college secularized. In 1849, after a lengthy and heated debate, the newly elected responsible government of the Province of Canada voted to rename King’s College as the University of Toronto and severed the school’s ties with the church. Having anticipated this decision, the enraged Strachan had resigned a year earlier to open Trinity College as a private Anglican seminary. University College was created as the nondenominational teaching branch of the University of Toronto. During the American Civil War the threat of Union blockade on British North America prompted the creation of the University Rifle Corps which saw battle in resisting the Fenian raids on the Niagara border in 1866. The Corps was part of the Reserve Militia lead by Professor Henry Croft.

Established in 1878, the School of Practical Science was the precursor to the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering which has been nicknamed Skule since its earliest days. While the Faculty of Medicine opened in 1843 medical teaching was conducted by proprietary schools from 1853 until 1887 when the faculty absorbed the Toronto School of Medicine. Meanwhile the university continued to set examinations and confer medical degrees. The university opened the Faculty of Law in 1887, followed by the Faculty of Dentistry in 1888 when the Royal College of Dental Surgeons became an affiliate. Women were first admitted to the university in 1884.

A devastating fire in 1890 gutted the interior of University College and destroyed 33,000 volumes from the library but the university restored the building and replenished its library within two years. Over the next two decades a collegiate system took shape as the university arranged federation with several ecclesiastical colleges including Strachan’s Trinity College in 1904. The university operated the Royal Conservatory of Music from 1896 to 1991 and the Royal Ontario Museum from 1912 to 1968; both still retain close ties with the university as independent institutions. The University of Toronto Press was founded in 1901 as Canada’s first academic publishing house. The Faculty of Forestry founded in 1907 with Bernhard Fernow as dean was Canada’s first university faculty devoted to forest science. In 1910, the Faculty of Education opened its laboratory school, the University of Toronto Schools.

World wars and post-war years

The First and Second World Wars curtailed some university activities as undergraduate and graduate men eagerly enlisted. Intercollegiate athletic competitions and the Hart House Debates were suspended although exhibition and interfaculty games were still held. The David Dunlap Observatory in Richmond Hill opened in 1935 followed by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies in 1949. The university opened satellite campuses in Scarborough in 1964 and in Mississauga in 1967. The university’s former affiliated schools at the Ontario Agricultural College and Glendon Hall became fully independent of the University of Toronto and became part of University of Guelph (CA) in 1964 and York University (CA) in 1965 respectively. Beginning in the 1980s reductions in government funding prompted more rigorous fundraising efforts.

Since 2000

In 2000 Kin-Yip Chun was reinstated as a professor of the university after he launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against the university alleging racial discrimination. In 2017 a human rights application was filed against the University by one of its students for allegedly delaying the investigation of sexual assault and being dismissive of their concerns. In 2018 the university cleared one of its professors of allegations of discrimination and antisemitism in an internal investigation after a complaint was filed by one of its students.

The University of Toronto was the first Canadian university to amass a financial endowment greater than c. $1 billion in 2007. On September 24, 2020 the university announced a $250 million gift to the Faculty of Medicine from businessman and philanthropist James C. Temerty- the largest single philanthropic donation in Canadian history. This broke the previous record for the school set in 2019 when Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman jointly donated $100 million for the creation of a 750,000-square foot innovation and artificial intelligence centre.

Research

Since 1926 the University of Toronto has been a member of the Association of American Universities a consortium of the leading North American research universities. The university manages by far the largest annual research budget of any university in Canada with sponsored direct-cost expenditures of $878 million in 2010. In 2018 the University of Toronto was named the top research university in Canada by Research Infosource with a sponsored research income (external sources of funding) of $1,147.584 million in 2017. In the same year the university’s faculty averaged a sponsored research income of $428,200 while graduate students averaged a sponsored research income of $63,700. The federal government was the largest source of funding with grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council amounting to about one-third of the research budget. About eight percent of research funding came from corporations- mostly in the healthcare industry.

The first practical electron microscope was built by the physics department in 1938. During World War II the university developed the G-suit- a life-saving garment worn by Allied fighter plane pilots later adopted for use by astronauts.Development of the infrared chemiluminescence technique improved analyses of energy behaviours in chemical reactions. In 1963 the asteroid 2104 Toronto was discovered in the David Dunlap Observatory (CA) in Richmond Hill and is named after the university. In 1972 studies on Cygnus X-1 led to the publication of the first observational evidence proving the existence of black holes. Toronto astronomers have also discovered the Uranian moons of Caliban and Sycorax; the dwarf galaxies of Andromeda I, II and III; and the supernova SN 1987A. A pioneer in computing technology the university designed and built UTEC- one of the world’s first operational computers- and later purchased Ferut- the second commercial computer after UNIVAC I. Multi-touch technology was developed at Toronto with applications ranging from handheld devices to collaboration walls. The AeroVelo Atlas which won the Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition in 2013 was developed by the university’s team of students and graduates and was tested in Vaughan.

The discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921 is considered among the most significant events in the history of medicine. The stem cell was discovered at the university in 1963 forming the basis for bone marrow transplantation and all subsequent research on adult and embryonic stem cells. This was the first of many findings at Toronto relating to stem cells including the identification of pancreatic and retinal stem cells. The cancer stem cell was first identified in 1997 by Toronto researchers who have since found stem cell associations in leukemia; brain tumors; and colorectal cancer. Medical inventions developed at Toronto include the glycaemic index; the infant cereal Pablum; the use of protective hypothermia in open heart surgery; and the first artificial cardiac pacemaker. The first successful single-lung transplant was performed at Toronto in 1981 followed by the first nerve transplant in 1988; and the first double-lung transplant in 1989. Researchers identified the maturation promoting factor that regulates cell division and discovered the T-cell receptor which triggers responses of the immune system. The university is credited with isolating the genes that cause Fanconi anemia; cystic fibrosis; and early-onset Alzheimer’s disease among numerous other diseases. Between 1914 and 1972 the university operated the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories- now part of the pharmaceutical corporation Sanofi-Aventis. Among the research conducted at the laboratory was the development of gel electrophoresis.

The University of Toronto is the primary research presence that supports one of the world’s largest concentrations of biotechnology firms. More than 5,000 principal investigators reside within 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the university grounds in Toronto’s Discovery District conducting $1 billion of medical research annually. MaRS Discovery District is a research park that serves commercial enterprises and the university’s technology transfer ventures. In 2008, the university disclosed 159 inventions and had 114 active start-up companies. Its SciNet Consortium operates the most powerful supercomputer in Canada.

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]: “An encouraging start for Run 3”

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]

8.31.22
Mike Lamont

In challenging times, it’s reassuring to see CERN’s accelerator complex fully up and running again, with physics being delivered to the experiments at ISOLDE and HIE-ISOLDE, n_TOF, AD-ELENA, the East Area, the North Area, AWAKE, HiRadMat, CLEAR and, of course, the LHC – the current temporary unscheduled stop notwithstanding – and great work being done with test beams and at the irradiation facilities.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ISOLDE Looking down into the ISOLDE experimental hall.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] HIE-ISOLDE One of the four cryomodules of the linac with its five radiofrequency cavities. Credit: CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] n_TOF

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AD-ELENA

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AWAKE.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] HiRadMat -High Radiation to Materials at CERN.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]CLEAR.

On the LHC side, following extensive recommissioning with beam, the first collisions with the detectors on were produced the day after we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson. The first stable beams were followed by a period of interleaved commissioning and intensity ramp-up. Every year, the number of bunches per beam is carefully increased in stages, with sign-off by the Machine Protection Panel after a designated length of time/number of fills at a given configuration. This year, the LHC ramped up from 72 to 315, 603, 987, 1227, 1551, 1935, 2173 and then 2413 bunches per beam in the space of five and a half weeks, with the first 1227-bunch fill taking place on 29 July, a few days ahead of schedule. Healthy progress was made, despite a familiar mix of issues along the way, and 2440 bunches were achieved by 12 August.

Experience tells us that the first year of operation with beam after a three-year shutdown has the potential to be a little rocky. The challenges foreseen included additional main dipole training quenches due to the machine now operating at 6.8 TeV, electron cloud, and unidentified falling objects (UFOs).

The vacuum team had anticipated fully deconditioned beam screens and the need to restart from scratch with an electron cloud reduction campaign. A full scrubbing programme successfully brought the initially very high electron cloud to acceptable levels, with further conditioning foreseen during the long, high-intensity physics runs. Here, the key issue is the e-cloud heat load to the cryogenics system – a real operational limit on the maximum intensity that can be handled by the LHC.

UFOs, a real bugbear in 2015, were also expected to reappear in number after LS2. This did indeed prove to be the case but, fortunately, they have conditioned down quickly and are now occurring less often. Although still a cause of occasional premature dumps, thanks to careful management of beam loss thresholds, they haven’t been debilitating.

In parallel, there has been the necessary re-bedding in and debugging of extensive, complex accelerator systems. Recent availability has been moderate compared with the impressive levels achieved at the end of Run 2.

Luminosity performance has been stunning. On the back of the improvements made during the injector upgrade programme (LIU), the injectors have been delivering high-quality beam, with low transverse beam size. Well established procedures and excellent parameter control in the LHC have enabled the full potential of the beams to be exploited. For the moment, the Operations team is still working with around nominal bunch intensity, with the possibility to go significantly higher yet to be exercised. The excellent performance is testament to the continued investment in understanding, tools, machine development, accelerator physics, accelerator systems such as instrumentation and transverse feedback, as well as a lot of hard work.

Although the LHC has the potential to go significantly higher, the peak luminosity for Run 3 is limited to around 2e34 cm^-2 s^-1 due to the heat load from the luminosity debris, which impacts the superconducting inner triplet magnets. The luminosity is limited through transverse displacement or by varying the beam size at the interaction point. Sophisticated new operation tools have been deployed to gently reduce the beam size in stable beams (beta* levelling) in order to keep the luminosity level at its maximum value for as long as possible.

With reasonable availability and some long fills, production rates have been good, and 11 fb-1 were delivered to ATLAS by 23 August. However, when the luminosity curve points high, never extrapolate – you will anger the accelerator gods. We’d foreseen training quenches, UFOs, electron-cloud heat load and system debugging and, indeed, got caught by a big one on 23 August.

A cooling tower control problem temporarily knocked out the cryogenics at Point 4. Here, the cryogenics system cools not only the magnets but also the superconducting RF cavities. Following the incident, the liquid helium in the RF cryomodules warmed and vaporized, increasing the pressure inside the modules. This situation is foreseen and release valves are in place should the pressure rise above a certain level, carefully set to avoid damage to the RF cavities. The release valves are backed up by thin graphite “burst discs”, which are designed to open at a higher pressure than that which triggers the opening of the release valves.

On 23 August, the release valves opened as designed. Unfortunately, in the minutes that followed 3 burst discs (out of 16) opened at below their design value. A task force was already in place and had performed detailed investigations following a similar incident earlier in the year; mitigation measures had already been planned for the coming year-end technical stop.

A blown burst disc opens the modules to air, necessitating a ten-day warm-up to flush any moisture off the cavities, followed by cool-down and cavity reconditioning. The tail end of the recovery period overlaps with a planned five-day technical stop and we hope to be back in action with beam in the second half of September.

The cryogenics team has developed an energy economy mode for the LHC and is able to switch within a day to a configuration with fewer active units, saving around 9 MW. This mode is used during the beam commissioning period and ion runs, when the full cooling capacity of the system is not required. This mode was deployed immediately for the duration of the RF recovery.

Despite the RF incident, the performance of the LHC and, indeed, the whole accelerator complex is very encouraging and bodes well for a productive Run 3. That these decades-old machines (the PS is 63 this year!) and the associated facilities continue to deliver their incredible spectrum of physics at the limits of their capabilities is testament to the continuing dedication, commitment and ingenuity of everyone involved.

See the full article here.

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THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS another view Image Claudia Marcelloni ATLAS CERN.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CMS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

LHC

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube.

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

CERN SixTrack LHC particles.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire)(EU), known as CERN, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and has 23 member states. Israel is the only non-European country granted full membership. CERN is an official United Nations Observer.

The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory, which in 2019 had 2,660 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,400 users from institutions in more than 70 countries. In 2016 CERN generated 49 petabytes of data.

CERN’s main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research – as a result, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. The main site at Meyrin hosts a large computing facility, which is primarily used to store and analyse data from experiments, as well as simulate events. Researchers need remote access to these facilities, so the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

The convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe. The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current Organization Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Organization for Nuclear Research)(EU) in 1954. According to Lew Kowarski, a former director of CERN, when the name was changed, the abbreviation could have become the awkward OERN, and Werner Heisenberg said that this could “still be CERN even if the name is [not]”.

CERN’s first president was Sir Benjamin Lockspeiser. Edoardo Amaldi was the general secretary of CERN at its early stages when operations were still provisional, while the first Director-General (1954) was Felix Bloch.

The laboratory was originally devoted to the study of atomic nuclei, but was soon applied to higher-energy physics, concerned mainly with the study of interactions between subatomic particles. Therefore, the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics (Laboratoire européen pour la physique des particules), which better describes the research being performed there.

Founding members

At the sixth session of the CERN Council, which took place in Paris from 29 June – 1 July 1953, the convention establishing the organization was signed, subject to ratification, by 12 states. The convention was gradually ratified by the 12 founding Member States: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and “Yugoslavia”.

Scientific achievements

Several important achievements in particle physics have been made through experiments at CERN. They include:

1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber.
1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments.
1989: The determination of the number of light neutrino families at the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) operating on the Z boson peak.
1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment.
1999: The discovery of direct CP violation in the NA48 experiment.
2010: The isolation of 38 atoms of antihydrogen.
2011: Maintaining antihydrogen for over 15 minutes.
2012: A boson with mass around 125 GeV/c2 consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson.

In September 2011, CERN attracted media attention when the OPERA Collaboration reported the detection of possibly faster-than-light neutrinos. Further tests showed that the results were flawed due to an incorrectly connected GPS synchronization cable.

The 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that resulted in the discoveries of the W and Z bosons. The 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber”. The 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs for the theoretical description of the Higgs mechanism in the year after the Higgs boson was found by CERN experiments.

Computer science

The World Wide Web began as a CERN project named ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 and Robert Cailliau in 1990. Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honoured by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web.

Current complex

CERN operates a network of six accelerators and a decelerator. Each machine in the chain increases the energy of particle beams before delivering them to experiments or to the next more powerful accelerator. Currently (as of 2019) active machines are:

The LINAC 3 linear accelerator generating low energy particles. It provides heavy ions at 4.2 MeV/u for injection into the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR).
The Proton Synchrotron Booster increases the energy of particles generated by the proton linear accelerator before they are transferred to the other accelerators.
The Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) accelerates the ions from the ion linear accelerator LINAC 3, before transferring them to the Proton Synchrotron (PS). This accelerator was commissioned in 2005, after having been reconfigured from the previous Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR).
The 28 GeV Proton Synchrotron (PS), built during 1954—1959 and still operating as a feeder to the more powerful SPS.
The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), a circular accelerator with a diameter of 2 kilometres built in a tunnel, which started operation in 1976. It was designed to deliver an energy of 300 GeV and was gradually upgraded to 450 GeV. As well as having its own beamlines for fixed-target experiments (currently COMPASS and NA62), it has been operated as a proton–antiproton collider (the SppS collider), and for accelerating high energy electrons and positrons which were injected into the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP). Since 2008, it has been used to inject protons and heavy ions into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The On-Line Isotope Mass Separator (ISOLDE), which is used to study unstable nuclei. The radioactive ions are produced by the impact of protons at an energy of 1.0–1.4 GeV from the Proton Synchrotron Booster. It was first commissioned in 1967 and was rebuilt with major upgrades in 1974 and 1992.
The Antiproton Decelerator (AD), which reduces the velocity of antiprotons to about 10% of the speed of light for research of antimatter.[50] The AD machine was reconfigured from the previous Antiproton Collector (AC) machine.
The AWAKE experiment, which is a proof-of-principle plasma wakefield accelerator.
The CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) accelerator research and development facility.

Large Hadron Collider

Many activities at CERN currently involve operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments for it. The LHC represents a large-scale, worldwide scientific cooperation project.

The LHC tunnel is located 100 metres underground, in the region between the Geneva International Airport and the nearby Jura mountains. The majority of its length is on the French side of the border. It uses the 27 km circumference circular tunnel previously occupied by the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP), which was shut down in November 2000. CERN’s existing PS/SPS accelerator complexes are used to pre-accelerate protons and lead ions which are then injected into the LHC.

Eight experiments (CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, MoEDAL, TOTEM, LHCf, FASER and ALICE) are located along the collider; each of them studies particle collisions from a different aspect, and with different technologies. Construction for these experiments required an extraordinary engineering effort. For example, a special crane was rented from Belgium to lower pieces of the CMS detector into its cavern, since each piece weighed nearly 2,000 tons. The first of the approximately 5,000 magnets necessary for construction was lowered down a special shaft at 13:00 GMT on 7 March 2005.

The LHC has begun to generate vast quantities of data, which CERN streams to laboratories around the world for distributed processing (making use of a specialized grid infrastructure, the LHC Computing Grid). During April 2005, a trial successfully streamed 600 MB/s to seven different sites across the world.

The initial particle beams were injected into the LHC August 2008. The first beam was circulated through the entire LHC on 10 September 2008, but the system failed 10 days later because of a faulty magnet connection, and it was stopped for repairs on 19 September 2008.

The LHC resumed operation on 20 November 2009 by successfully circulating two beams, each with an energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The challenge for the engineers was then to try to line up the two beams so that they smashed into each other. This is like “firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other” according to Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology.

On 30 March 2010, the LHC successfully collided two proton beams with 3.5 TeV of energy per proton, resulting in a 7 TeV collision energy. However, this was just the start of what was needed for the expected discovery of the Higgs boson. When the 7 TeV experimental period ended, the LHC revved to 8 TeV (4 TeV per proton) starting March 2012, and soon began particle collisions at that energy. In July 2012, CERN scientists announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle that was later confirmed to be the Higgs boson.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH) ATLAS Higgs Event June 18, 2012.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)CMS Higgs Event May 27, 2012.

Peter Higgs – University of Edinburgh [Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann] (SCT).

In March 2013, CERN announced that the measurements performed on the newly found particle allowed it to conclude that this is a Higgs boson. In early 2013, the LHC was deactivated for a two-year maintenance period, to strengthen the electrical connections between magnets inside the accelerator and for other upgrades.

On 5 April 2015, after two years of maintenance and consolidation, the LHC restarted for a second run. The first ramp to the record-breaking energy of 6.5 TeV was performed on 10 April 2015. In 2016, the design collision rate was exceeded for the first time. A second two-year period of shutdown begun at the end of 2018.

Accelerators under construction

As of October 2019, the construction is on-going to upgrade the LHC’s luminosity in a project called High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).

This project should see the LHC accelerator upgraded by 2026 to an order of magnitude higher luminosity.

As part of the HL-LHC upgrade project, also other CERN accelerators and their subsystems are receiving upgrades. Among other work, the LINAC 2 linear accelerator injector was decommissioned, to be replaced by a new injector accelerator, the LINAC4 in 2020.

Possible future accelerators

CERN, in collaboration with groups worldwide, is investigating two main concepts for future accelerators: A linear electron-positron collider with a new acceleration concept to increase the energy (CLIC) and a larger version of the LHC, a project currently named Future Circular Collider.

CERN CLIC collider

CERN FCC Future Circular Collider details of proposed 100km-diameter successor to LHC.

Not discussed or described, but worthy of consideration is the ILC, International Linear Collider in the planning stages for construction in Japan.

ILC schematic, being planned for the Kitakami highland, in the Iwate prefecture of northern Japan.

Participation

Since its foundation by 12 members in 1954, CERN regularly accepted new members. All new members have remained in the organization continuously since their accession, except Spain and Yugoslavia. Spain first joined CERN in 1961, withdrew in 1969, and rejoined in 1983. Yugoslavia was a founding member of CERN but quit in 1961. Of the 23 members, Israel joined CERN as a full member on 6 January 2014, becoming the first (and currently only) non-European full member.

Enlargement

Associate Members, Candidates:

Turkey signed an association agreement on 12 May 2014 and became an associate member on 6 May 2015.
Pakistan signed an association agreement on 19 December 2014 and became an associate member on 31 July 2015.
Cyprus signed an association agreement on 5 October 2012 and became an associate Member in the pre-stage to membership on 1 April 2016.
Ukraine signed an association agreement on 3 October 2013. The agreement was ratified on 5 October 2016.
India signed an association agreement on 21 November 2016. The agreement was ratified on 16 January 2017.
Slovenia was approved for admission as an Associate Member state in the pre-stage to membership on 16 December 2016. The agreement was ratified on 4 July 2017.
Lithuania was approved for admission as an Associate Member state on 16 June 2017. The association agreement was signed on 27 June 2017 and ratified on 8 January 2018.
Croatia was approved for admission as an Associate Member state on 28 February 2019. The agreement was ratified on 10 October 2019.
Estonia was approved for admission as an Associate Member in the pre-stage to membership state on 19 June 2020. The agreement was ratified on 1 February 2021.

From The DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]: “Preparing for a more powerful particle accelerator”

FNAL Art Image by Angela Gonzales

From The DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research worldwide.

and

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]

August 25, 2022
Mary Magnuson

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is back in action after a three-year scheduled technical shutdown period. Experts circulated beam in the powerful particle accelerator at the end of April, and Run 3 physics started in early July at the highest collision energy ever achieved.

The LHC experiments expect to collect petabytes of data to better understand nature at the smallest scale. Thousands of collaborators are testing the Standard Model of particle physics and hunting for new physics—things like supersymmetry, dark matter or undiscovered particles.

Standard Model of Particle Physics, Quantum Diaries.

Standard Model of Supersymmetric particles. The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology[ הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל](IL)

At the same time, researchers continue to prepare for the next iteration of the LHC.

Later this decade, scientists will begin operating with an upgraded accelerator for the High-Luminosity LHC, which will collide more protons with more luminosity than ever before.

With it, scientists expect to see at least five to seven times as many collisions as they do now. Researchers are building technology to improve their detectors so that they can handle the increased luminosity. The detectors are running until the end of the 2030 and will cumulate a factor of 20 more data.

See the full article here.

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Meet CERN in a variety of places:

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THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

ATLAS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS.

ALICE
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

CMS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CMS.

Fermilab is the U.S. home center for CMS research

LHCb
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

LHC

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube.

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

CERN SixTrack LHC particles.

The DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operated by the Fermi Research Alliance, a joint venture of The University of Chicago, and The Universities Research Association. Fermilab is a part of The Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.

Fermilab’s Tevatron was a landmark particle accelerator; until the startup in 2008 of the Large Hadron Collider(CH) near Geneva, Switzerland, it was the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, accelerating antiprotons to energies of 500 GeV, and producing proton-proton collisions with energies of up to 1.6 TeV, the first accelerator to reach one “tera-electron-volt” energy. At 3.9 miles (6.3 km), it was the world’s fourth-largest particle accelerator in circumference. One of its most important achievements was the 1995 discovery of the top quark, announced by research teams using the Tevatron’s CDF and DØ detectors. It was shut down in 2011.

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[Earlier than the LHC at CERN, The DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory had sought the Higgs with the Tevatron Accelerator.

FNAL/Tevatron map

Tevatron Accelerator

FNAL/Tevatron CDF detector

FNAL/Tevatron DØ detector

But the Tevatron could barely muster 2 TeV [Terraelectron volts], not enough energy to find the Higgs. CERN’s LHC is capable of 13 TeV.

Another possible attempt in the U.S. would have been the Super Conducting Supercollider.

54 mile Superconducting Super Collider map, a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, cancelled in 1993 by the U.S. Congress for having no immediate economic benefits, and the loss of support by California and other nearby states, because California desired the project. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 TeV and was set to be the world’s largest and most energetic collider. A loss all around as the project never went forward and the U.S. ceded the lead in HEP to Europe. Surely the SSC would have found the Higgs.

Fermilab has gone on to become a world powerhouse in neutrino research with the LBNF/DUNE project which will send neutrinos 800 miles to SURF-The Sanford Underground Research Facility in in Lead, South Dakota.
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DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory DUNE LBNF from FNAL to Sanford Underground Research Facility, Lead, South Dakota.

DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory DUNE/ LBNF Caverns at Sanford Underground Research Facility.

<Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory DUNE/LBNF experiment Argon tank at Sanford Underground Research Facility.

SURF-Sanford Underground Research Facility, Lead, South Dakota.

Homestake Mining, Lead, South Dakota.

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In addition to high-energy collider physics, Fermilab hosts fixed-target and neutrino experiments, such as MicroBooNE (Micro Booster Neutrino Experiment), NOνA (NuMI Off-Axis νe Appearance) and SeaQuest. Completed neutrino experiments include MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search), MINOS+, MiniBooNE and SciBooNE (SciBar Booster Neutrino Experiment). The MiniBooNE detector was a 40-foot (12 m) diameter sphere containing 800 tons of mineral oil lined with 1,520 phototube detectors. An estimated 1 million neutrino events were recorded each year. SciBooNE sat in the same neutrino beam as MiniBooNE but had fine-grained tracking capabilities. The NOνA experiment uses, and the MINOS experiment used, Fermilab’s NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) beam, which is an intense beam of neutrinos that travels 455 miles (732 km) through the Earth to the Soudan Mine in Minnesota and the Ash River, Minnesota, site of the NOνA far detector. In 2017, the ICARUS neutrino experiment was moved from CERN to Fermilab.
In the public realm, Fermilab is home to a native prairie ecosystem restoration project and hosts many cultural events: public science lectures and symposia, classical and contemporary music concerts, folk dancing and arts galleries. The site is open from dawn to dusk to visitors who present valid photo identification.

Asteroid 11998 Fermilab is named in honor of the laboratory.

Weston, Illinois, was a community next to Batavia voted out of existence by its village board in 1966 to provide a site for Fermilab.

The laboratory was founded in 1969 as the National Accelerator Laboratory; it was renamed in honor of Enrico Fermi in 1974. The laboratory’s first director was Robert Rathbun Wilson, under whom the laboratory opened ahead of time and under budget. Many of the sculptures on the site are of his creation. He is the namesake of the site’s high-rise laboratory building, whose unique shape has become the symbol for Fermilab and which is the center of activity on the campus.

After Wilson stepped down in 1978 to protest the lack of funding for the lab, Leon M. Lederman took on the job. It was under his guidance that the original accelerator was replaced with the Tevatron, an accelerator capable of colliding protons and antiprotons at a combined energy of 1.96 TeV. Lederman stepped down in 1989. The science education center at the site was named in his honor.

The later directors include:

John Peoples, 1989 to 1996
Michael S. Witherell, July 1999 to June 2005
Piermaria Oddone, July 2005 to July 2013
Nigel Lockyer, September 2013 to the present

Fermilab continues to participate in the work at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); it serves as a Tier 1 site in the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.

From “Symmetry”: “Accelerator operators:: pillars of particle physics”

From “Symmetry”

DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Wilson Hall.

DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory campus with world’s first x-ray laser- the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) unveiled in 2009.

8.23.22
Emily Driehaus

FNAL PIP-II Project Site Depiction

It takes years of on-the-job training to learn the ins and outs of particle accelerator operation.

Despite the fact that accelerator operators are essential to keeping an accelerator laboratory afloat, the role is largely unknown outside of physics—even to the people who wind up in the job.

“It was a kind of position that I wasn’t familiar with or knew even existed before,” says Judah O’Neil, who for the last two years has worked at the US Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

At Fermilab, accelerator operators are responsible for maintaining and running the machinery needed to provide beams of particles to all the experiments around the lab.

It all starts with the 500-foot linear accelerator, or Linac, which operators use to give a beam of protons their first kick. From the Linac, the proton beam heads to the Booster, a 1,500-foot circular accelerator that increases the energy of the beam. From there, operators can direct the beam to different parts of the complex, including Fermilab’s neutrino and muon experiments.

By steering protons from the Booster into a target, operators can create beams of low-energy neutrinos for neutrino experiments. Operators can also transfer a beam from the Booster into the 2-miles-in-circumference Recycler instead to change its composition or produce beams of muons for muon experiments. Transferring protons from the Recycler to the Main Injector, the next step along the line, allows operators to ramp up the energy even more. They use the Main Injector, also 2 miles in circumference, to produce the world’s highest-intensity neutrino beam for long-baseline neutrino experiments.

The PIP-II construction project, currently underway, will increase the capabilities of the entire accelerator complex with a brand-new 700-foot linear superconducting accelerator.

All of this, along with maintenance of the separate parts of the accelerator complex, goes through the accelerator operators in Fermilab’s Main Control Room.

Each group of operators, led by a crew chief, rotates through day, evening and overnight shifts to keep the control room staffed 24/7. “[Having rotating shifts] allows you to know everyone and get experience at different times during the day,” O’Neil says. “You get to be in the control room and talk to the experts, see what’s going on, and meet everyone.”

Working in the control room requires operators to multitask. They must keep track of multiple monitors at their individual consoles, along with bigger screens that display to the whole room an overall system status and a weather radar—since the accelerator complex can be affected by storms. Beeps and blips and other sound effects provide auditory cues that can cut through the noise of people coming in to check out access keys, inform operators of an issue, or just pop by for a quick hello. If something goes wrong, operators are the ones to head out to investigate and either solve the problem or find a more senior operator who can.

Operators don’t learn how to manage these responsibilities overnight. They go through a training period that lasts through their first two years on the job.

“You aren’t even assigned to a crew for your first month because you’re just getting through some initial training,” says Laura Bolt, who has been an operator since November 2021. “For the first year to two years that you’re here, your primary objective is to finish that training and also be helpful in the control room.”

Once operators complete their on-the-job training, or OJTs, they can then either specialize in a specific area or help train newer operators.

“When you start, you are doing things, but it’s usually with supervision or you’re watching somebody do something so you learn how to do it,” says Cassidy Mayorga, who has been an operator for four years. “Then you slowly shift into doing it on your own, and then you shift into doing it to teach other people.”

Mayorga serves on the training committee and helps make sure training documentation is up-to-date.

Completing OJTs involves studying instruction manuals and taking written tests, supplemented by in-person instruction from senior operators.

Because so much of an operator’s training comes from collaboration and getting hands-on experience with supervision, the pandemic had a significant impact on the Main Control Room at Fermilab. The usual hustle and bustle came grinding to a halt as operators acclimated to new schedules and skeleton crew shifts to allow for social distancing. “It was a big adjustment,” Mayorga says. “It was very quiet and kind of unnerving.”

For operators who were hired during the pandemic, the gradual lifting of restrictions and more recent return to semi-normal daily operations gave them a new appreciation for their colleagues’ expertise.

“It’s really good to have those conversations with the experts and be able to have a lot of people in the control room at once because you get different opinions, you get to learn a lot of things,” O’Neil says.

The operators are a diverse group. Some of them have known that they wanted to work at Fermilab since they were young, others stumbled across the position just by chance. There are writers, like Bolt; amateur astronomers, like O’Neil; and Ultimate Frisbee enthusiasts, like Mayorga. Many share at least one interest: video games.

Bolt, O’Neil and Mayorga all say that being an operator is a great gig for those interested in the hands-on elements of particle physics, including those who don’t plan to follow the usual path straight through a physics PhD. “The cool factor of this job is just off the charts,” Bolt says. “This is the perfect place for non-traditional physics students.”

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LHC

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

CERN LHC tube in the tunnel. Credit: Maximilien Brice and Julien Marius Ordan.

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

SixTRack CERN LHC particles

LHC

THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

ATLAS

Iconic view of the European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear] [Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN] ATLAS detector.

ALICE

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

CMS

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Compact Muon Solenoid Detector.

LHCb

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

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[Earlier than the LHC at CERN, The DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory had sought the Higgs with the Tevatron Accelerator.

FNAL/Tevatron map

Tevatron Accelerator

FNAL/Tevatron CDF detector

FNAL/Tevatron DØ detector

But the Tevatron could barely muster 2 TeV [Terraelecton volts], not enough energy to find the Higgs. CERN’s LHC is capable of 13 TeV.

Another possible attempt in the U.S. would have been the Super Conducting Supercollider.

54 mile Superconducting Super Collider map, a particle accelerator complex under construction in the vicinity of Waxahachie, Texas, cancelled in 1993 by the U.S. Congress for having no immediate economic benefits, and the loss of support by California and other nearby states, because California desired the project. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers (54.1 mi) with an energy of 20 TeV and was set to be the world’s largest and most energetic collider. A loss all around as the project never went forward and the U.S. ceded the lead in HEP to Europe. Surely the SSC would have found the Higgs.

Fermilab has gone on to become a world powerhouse in neutrino research with the LBNF/DUNE project which will send neutrinos 800 miles to SURF-The Sanford Underground Research Facility in in Lead, South Dakota.]
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See the full article here .

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Symmetry is a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication.

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN] Via “Nature” : “How the revamped Large Hadron Collider will hunt for new physics”

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

Via

“Nature”

25 May 2022 [In social media 8.10.22]
Elizabeth Gibney

Detectors at the ALICE experiment were revamped during the Large Hadron Collider’s 2018–22 shutdown. Credit: Maximilien Brice, Julien Marius Ordan/CERN.

The hunt for new physics is back on. The world’s most powerful machine for smashing high-energy particles together, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has fired up after a shutdown of more than three years. Beams of protons are once again whizzing around its 27-kilometre loop at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva. This July, physicists switched on their experiments and watch bunches of particles collide.

THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

ATLAS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS.

ALICE
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

CMS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CMS.

LHCb
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

In its first two stints, in 2009–13 and 2015–18, the LHC explored the known physics world. All of that work — including the triumphant 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson — reaffirmed physicists’ current best description of the particles and forces that make up the Universe: the standard model.

Standard Model of Particle Physics via Particle Fever movie.

But scientists sifting through the detritus of quadrillions of high-energy collisions have yet to find proof of any surprising new particles or anything else completely unknown.

This time could be different. The LHC has so far cost US$9.2 billion to build, including the latest upgrades: version three comes with more data, better detectors and innovative ways to search for new physics. What’s more, scientists start with a tantalizing shopping list of anomalous results — many more than at the start of the last run — that hint at where to look for particles outside the standard model.

“We’re really starting with adrenaline up,” says Isabel Pedraza, a particle physicist at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP) in Mexico. “I’m sure we will see something in run 3.”

Higher energy and more data

After renovations to its particle accelerators, the third version of the LHC will collide protons at 13.6 trillion electron volts (TeV) — slightly higher than in run 2, which reached 13 TeV. The more-energetic smashes should increase the chances that collisions will create particles in high-energy regions where some theories suggest new physics could lie, says Rende Steerenberg, who leads beam operations at CERN. The machine’s beams will also deliver more-compact bunches of particles, increasing the probability of collisions. This will allow the LHC to maintain its peak rate of collisions for longer, ultimately allowing experiments to record as many data as in the first two runs combined.

To deal with the flood, the machine’s detectors — layers of sensors that capture particles that spray from collisions and measure their energy, momentum and other properties — have been upgraded to make them more efficient and precise.

Credit: Nik Spencer/Nature; Source: CERN.

A major challenge for LHC researchers has always been that so little of the collision data can be stored. The machine collides bunches 40 million times per second, and each proton–proton collision, or ‘event’, can spew out hundreds of particles. ‘Trigger’ systems must weed out the most interesting of these events and throw the bulk of the data away. For example, at CMS — one of the LHC’s four main experiments — a trigger built into the hardware makes a rough cut of around 100,000 events per second on the basis of assessments of properties such as the particles’ energies, before software picks out around 1,000 to reconstruct in full for analysis.

With more data, the trigger systems must triage even more events. One improvement comes from a trial of chips originally designed for video games, called GPUs (graphics processing units). These can reconstruct particle histories more quickly than conventional processors can, so the software will be able to scan faster and across more criteria each second. That will allow it to potentially spot strange collisions that might previously have been missed.

In particular, the LHCb experiment has revamped its detector electronics so that it will use only software to scan events for interesting physics. Improvements across the experiment mean that it should collect four times more data in run 3 than it did in run 2. It is “almost like a brand new detector”, says Yasmine Amhis, a physicist at the Laboratory of the Irène-Joliot Curie Physics of the Two Infinities Lab in Orsay, France, and member of the LHCb collaboration.

The LHCb’s ‘vertex locator’, placed close to the LHC’s beamline to see short-lived particles.Credit: Maximilien Brice, Julien Marius Ordan/CERN.

Spotting anomalies

Run 3 will also give physicists more precision in their measurements of known particles, such as the Higgs boson, says Ludovico Pontecorvo, a physicist with the ATLAS experiment. This alone could produce results that conflict with known physics — for instance, when measuring it more precisely shrinks the error bars enough to put it outside the standard model’s predictions.

But physicists also want to know whether a host of odd recent results are genuine anomalies, which might help to fill some gaps in understanding about the Universe. The standard model is incomplete: it cannot account for phenomena such as dark matter, for instance. And findings that jar with the model — but are not firm enough to claim as a definite discrepancy — have popped up many times in the past two years.

Credit: Nik Spencer/Nature; Source: CERN.

The most recent is from the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, which shut down in 2011.

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FNAL Tevatron

FNAL/Tevatron map

Tevatron Accelerator
FNAL/Tevatron

FNAL/Tevatron CDF detector

FNAL/Tevatron DØ detector

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Researchers have spent the past decade poring through data from the Tevatron’s CDF experiment. In April, they reported [1] that the mass of the W boson, a fundamental particle that carries the weak nuclear force involved in radioactive decay, is significantly higher than the standard model predicts.

That doesn’t chime with LHC data: measurements at ATLAS and LHCb disagree with the CDF data, although they are less precise. Physicists at CMS are now working on their own measurement, using data from the machine’s second run. Data from run 3 could provide a definitive answer, although not immediately, because the mass of the W boson is notoriously difficult to measure.

B-meson confusion

The LHC’s data have hinted at other anomalies. In particular, evidence has been building for almost a decade of odd behaviour in particles called B mesons. These transient particles, which quickly decay into others, are so named because they contain pairs of fundamental particles that include a ‘bottom’ or ‘beauty’ quark. LHCb analyses suggest that B-meson decays tend to produce electrons more often than they produce their heavier cousins, muons [2]. The standard model predicts that nature should not prefer one over the other, says Tara Shears, a particle physicist at the University of Liverpool, UK, and a member of the LHCb collaboration. “Muons are being produced about 15% less often than electrons, and it’s utterly bizarre,” she says.

The result differs from the predictions of the standard model with a significance of around 3 sigma, or 3 standard deviations from what’s expected — which translates to a 3 in 1,000 chance that random noise could have produced the apparent bias. Only more data can confirm whether the effect is real or a statistical fluke. Experimentalists might have misunderstood something in their data or machine, but now that many of the relevant LHCb detectors have been replaced, the next phase of data-gathering should provide a cross-check, Shears says. “We will be crushed if [the anomaly] goes away. But that’s life as a scientist, that can happen.”

The anomaly is backed up by similar subtle discrepancies that LHCb has seen in other decays involving bottom quarks; experiments at colliders in Japan and the United States have also seen hints of this odd result [Nature (below)]. This kind of work is LHCb’s métier: its detectors were designed to study in detail the decays of particles that contain heavy quarks, allowing the experiment to gather indirect hints of phenomena that might influence these particles’ behaviour. CMS and ATLAS are more general-purpose experiments, but experimenters there are now checking to see whether they can spot more of the events that are sensitive to the anomalies, says Florencia Canelli, an experimental particle physicist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and member of the CMS collaboration.

Hunt for the leptoquark

CMS and ATLAS will also do what LHCb cannot: comb collision data to look directly for the exotic particles that theorists suggest could be causing the still-unconfirmed anomalies. One such hypothetical particle has been dubbed the leptoquark, because it would, at high energies, take on properties of two otherwise distinct families of particles — leptons, such as electrons and muons, and quarks (see ‘Decoding decays’). This hybrid particle comes from theories that seek to unite the electromagnetic, weak and strong fundamental forces as aspects of the same force, and could explain the LHCb results. The leptoquark — or a complex version of it — also fits with another tantalizing anomaly; a measurement last year [3], from the Muon g − 2 experiment at Fermilab, that muons are more magnetic than expected [Nature (below)].

DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Muon g-2 studio. As muons race around a ring at the Muon g-2 studio, their spin axes twirl, reflecting the influence of unseen particles.

Credit: Nik Spencer/Nature.

At the Moriond particle-physics conference in La Thuile, Italy, in March, CMS researchers presented results of a search that found intriguing hints of a beyond-standard-model lepton. This particle would interact with leptoquarks and is predicted by some leptoquark theories. Physicists saw a slight excess of the particles that the proposed lepton could decay into, bottom quarks and taus (heavier cousins of the muon), but the finding’s significance is only 2.8σ. “Those are very exciting results, as LHCb is also seeing something similar,” says Pedraza. CMS physicists presented hints of other new phenomena at the conference: two possible particles that might decay into two taus, and a potential high-energy particle that, through a theorized but unproven decay route, would turn into distinctive particle cascades termed jets.

Another intriguing result comes from ATLAS, where Ismet Siral at the University of Oregon in Eugene and his colleagues looked for hypothetical heavy, long-lived charged particles. In trillions of collisions from 3 years of data they found 7 candidates at around 1.4 TeV, around 8 times the energy of the heaviest known particle [4]. Those results are 3.3 sigma, and the identity of the candidate particles remains a mystery. “We don’t know if this is real, we need more data. That’s where run 3 comes in,” says Siral.

CERN’s 86-metre long Linac4 accelerator, which produces proton beams for the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: Robert Hradil, Monika Majer/ProStudio22.ch/CERN.

Another LHC experiment, ALICE, will explore its own surprising finding: that the extreme conditions created in collisions between lead ions (which the LHC smashes together when not working with protons) might crop up elsewhere. ALICE is designed to study quark–gluon plasma, a hot, dense soup of fundamental particles created in collisions of heavy ions that is thought to have existed just after the Big Bang. Analyses of the first two runs found that particles in proton–proton and proton–lead ion collisions show some traits of this state of matter, such as paths that are correlated rather than random. “It’s an extremely interesting, unexpected phenomenon,” says Barbara Erazmus, deputy spokesperson for ALICE at CERN.

Like LHCb, ALICE has had a major upgrade, including updated electronics to provide it with a faster software-only trigger system. The experiment, which will probe the temperature of the plasma as well as precisely measuring particles that contain charm and beauty quarks, will be able to collect 100 times more events this time than in its previous two runs, thanks to improvements across its detectors.

Machine learning aids the search

Run 3 will see also entirely new experiments. FASER, half a kilometre from ATLAS, will hunt for light and weakly interacting particles including neutrinos and new phenomena that could explain dark matter.

CERN FASER is designed to study the interactions of high-energy neutrinos and search for new as-yet-undiscovered light and weakly interacting particles. Such particles are dominantly produced along the beam collision axis and may be long-lived particles, traveling hundreds of metres before decaying. The existence of such new particles is predicted by many models beyond the Standard Model that attempt to solve some of the biggest puzzles in physics, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of neutrino masses.

(These particles can’t be spotted by ATLAS, because they would fly out of collisions on a trajectory that hugs close to the LHC’s beamline and evades the detectors). Meanwhile, the ATLAS and CMS experiments now have improved detectors but will not receive major hardware upgrades until the next long shutdown, in 2026. At this point, the LHC will be overhauled to create more focused ‘high-luminosity’ beams, which will start up in 2029 (see ‘LHC timeline’). This will allow scientists in the following runs to collect 10 times more collision data than in runs 1 to 3 combined. For now, CMS and ATLAS have got prototype technology to help them prepare.

Credit: Nik Spencer/Nature; Source: CERN.

As well as collecting more events, physicists such as Siral are keen to change the way in which LHC experiments hunt for particles. So far, much of the LHC’s research has involved testing specific predictions (such as searching for the Higgs where physicists expected to see it) or hunting for particular hypotheses of new physics.

Scientists thought this would be a fruitful strategy, because they had a good steer on where to look. Many expected to find new heavy particles, such as those predicted by a group of theories known as supersymmetry, soon after the LHC started. That they have seen none rules out all but the most convoluted versions of supersymmetry. Today, few theoretical extensions of the standard model seem any more likely to be true than others.

Experimentalists are now shifting to search strategies that are less constrained by expectations. Both ATLAS and CMS are going to search for long-lived particles that could linger across two collisions, for instance. New search strategies often mean writing analysis software that rejects the usual assumptions, says Siral.

Machine learning is likely to help, too. Many LHC experiments already use this technique to distinguish particular sought-for collisions from the background noise. This is ‘supervised’ learning: the algorithm is given a pattern to hunt for. But researchers are increasingly using ‘unsupervised’ machine-learning algorithms that can scan widely for anomalies, without expectations. For example, a neural network can compare events against a learned simulation of the standard model. If the simulation can’t recreate the event, that’s an anomaly. Although this kind of approach is not yet used systematically, “I do think this is the direction people will go in,” says Sascha Caron of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, who works on applying these techniques to ATLAS data.

In making searches less biased, the triggers that decide which events are interesting to look at are crucial, so it helps that the new GPUs will be able to scour candidate events with wider criteria. CMS will also use an approach called ‘scouting’: analyzing rough reconstructions of all the 100,000 or so events initially selected but not saved in full detail. “It’s the equivalent of 10 years more of running your detector, but in one year,” says Andrea Massironi, a physicist with the CMS experiment.

The triggers themselves could also soon rely on machine learning to make their choices. Katya Govorkova, a particle physicist at CERN, and her colleagues have come up with a high-speed proof-of-principle algorithm that uses machine learning to select which of the collider’s 40 million events per second to save, according to their fit with the standard model [5]. In run 3, researchers plan to train and test the algorithm on CMS collisions, alongside the experiment’s conventional trigger. A challenge will be knowing how to analyse events that the algorithm labels as anomalous, because it cannot yet point to exactly why an event is anomalous, says Govorkova.

Physicists must keep an open mind about where they might find the thread that will lead them to a theory beyond the standard model, says Amhis. Although the current crop of anomalies is exciting, even previous oddities seen by multiple experiments turned out to be statistical flukes that faded away when more data were gathered. “It’s important that we continue to push all of the physics programme,” she says. “It’s a matter of not putting all your eggs in one basket.”

Science articles:
Nature
Nature

References:

1. CDF Collaboration. Science (2022).
2. LHCb collaboration. Nature Phys. (2022).
3. Abi, B. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2021).
4. ATLAS Collaboration (2022).
5. Govorkova, E. et al. Nature Mach. Int. (2022).

See the full article here .

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]: “Higgs10:: inventing the future of Higgs research”

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]

8.10.22
Matthew McCullough

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube

In 1975, three CERN theorists, John Ellis, Mary K. Gaillard and Dimitri Nanopoulos, undertook the first comprehensive study of the collider phenomenology of the Higgs boson. Almost 40 years later, it was discovered at the LHC.

Higgs

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH) ATLAS Higgs Event June 18, 2012.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)CMS Higgs Event May 27, 2012.

Peter Higgs – University of Edinburgh [Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann] (SCT).

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Now, ten years on, might we have such long-term foresight in anticipating the varied paths that future Higgs research may follow?

On 4 July 2022, enjoying the many beautiful presentations at the Higgs@10 symposium, a phrase kept ringing in my ears: “Compatible with Standard Model (SM) predictions”.

Standard Model of Particle Physics via Particle Fever movie.

Alarm bells were ringing. Really? Are we sure? Whether or not the Higgs is SM-like is a question that will shape the experimental future of Higgs research.

We may quantify an answer through the language of effective field theory, which is a mathematical manifestation of the notion that the most effective way to describe an object depends on the length scale you’re viewing it from. To astronauts, Earth is very effectively described as a smooth sphere. For summer students hiking to Le Reculet, it is not. So, too, of the quantum world. Far from a neutral atom, it effectively appears as a point-like particle with some leftover multipolar interactions with photons. At shorter distances, getting in amongst the electrons, this description fails entirely.

Ditto the Higgs. Whatever is going on in there, at energies near enough to mh, it is effectively described as a point particle with a handful of additional “operators”, which are essentially new particle interactions that aren’t contained in the SM (don’t feature on that mug or T-shirt) but do involve SM particles. By eye, the astronaut may be able to make out some features on Earth and surmise that there may be mountains, but they couldn’t actually estimate the students’ elevation gain. Similarly, the non-SM Higgs operators can capture the long-distance leftover effects of the microscopic innards of the Higgs, but not reveal their full glory in detail. If all of these extra operators vanish, the Higgs is SM-like. Let’s consider two hand-picked examples and investigate just how SM-like the Higgs is…

How “fuzzy” is it? Is it point-like down to the smallest distance scales or is it, like the pion, made up of other as-yet-unidentified new particles? In the latter case, much as for the pions and their constituent quarks and gluons, directly observing the new stuff would require going to higher energies. Alternatively, it could be point-like but probing it closely may reveal the telltale clues of a cloud of new particles that it interacts with. For your interest, the operator that can capture these properties is written (∂μ|H|2)2. If it vanishes, the Higgs is entirely point-like. If not, it’s fuzzier than expected. How fuzzy is it? Present LHC Higgs coupling measurements suggest it is effectively point-like down to a length scale merely a factor three below the electroweak scale. It could still be very fuzzy indeed! As fuzzy as a pion. If so, hardly an SM-like Higgs! We must do better and, through much more precise coupling measurements at the 0.2% level, a future Higgs factory like the FCC-ee could determine if the Higgs is point-like as far down as the 6% level.

Does the Higgs find itself attractive? Yes, according to the SM. New particles means new forces and so it follows that if the Higgs boson interacts with new heavy particles they will generate a new force between the Higgs and itself. The operator effectively capturing this is |H|6 and it literally shapes the way in which the Higgs field gave mass to particles during the very nascence of our universe! So, how SM-like is the Higgs self-attraction? With present experimental constraints, we know the Higgs self-attraction could be 530% stronger than the SM value (not merely self-attraction, more like outright vanity) or even −140% less (self-repulsive, more like). Hardly SM-like in either case! To have any idea of whether the self-attraction is SM-like, we must do a lot better. A future facility, such as the FCC-hh, CLIC or a muon collider, could probe the self-attraction at the much more precise 5% level.

CERN CLIC Collider annotated

CERN CLIC collider

Possible futures for Higgs

ILC schematic, being planned for the Kitakami highland, in the Iwate prefecture of northern Japan.

CERN FCC Future Circular Collider details of proposed 100km-diameter successor to LHC.

Chinese Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) map. It would be housed in a hundred-kilometer- (62-mile-) round tunnel at one of three potential sites. The documents work under the assumption that the collider will be located near Qinhuangdao City around 200 miles east of Beijing.

Patience is a virtue; complacency is not. It is far too early to call time at the bar for the Higgs boson. Who knows, we may even be served with something completely unexpected, like a new window into the dark sector of the universe. Truly exploring all facets of the nature of the Higgs boson, understanding whether or not it is SM-like, will take time (measured in decades) and a lot of hard work. But it can and should be done. This is the experimental future of Higgs research that we look forward to.

All that said, it’s no secret that many theorists expected the Higgs to be much less SM-like than it appears to be already. Heads duly scratched, a theoretical coup d’état is now silently under way. There were good reasons to expect something different: chiefly the hierarchy problem. This problem is not simply aesthetic. The SM breaks down at high energies, ultimately making pathological predictions, thus it can only be a long-distance effective field theory description of something else more fundamental. If, as was the case for pions, the Higgs mass is determined by the more fundamental parameters, then for the Higgs there is no mechanism to keep it lighter than the mass scale of the new particles in that theory. Yet colliders tell us there is a gap between the mass of the Higgs and that of those new particles. In the past, this motivated the discovery and development of new mechanisms to explain a light Higgs, such as the venerated low-scale supersymmetry, thus far a no-show at the LHC physics party, with its attendant non-SM-like Higgs.

Rudely awoken by the deluge of exclusion plots, coffee reluctantly smelled, theorists have, in recent years, put forward what could well transpire to be revolutionary theoretical developments. The hierarchy problem hasn’t gone away and neither has the data, so the other foundational assumptions covertly injected into the old theories, often linked to symmetry or aesthetic principles such as simplicity or minimality, have been interrogated and found wanting. In response, intrepid new classes of theories have been developed that can address the hierarchy problem whilst being consistent with all those bothersome exclusion plots. They range from relatively modest conceptual tweaks of existing structures, to the abandonment of aesthetic principles, and then all the way out the other side to attempts to link the Higgs mass to the origins of the universe, cosmology, the nature of the Big Bang and, at an extreme, speculations about possible links between the Higgs mass and the existence of life itself. You name it, we’re boldly going.

It’s no fait accompli. None of these ideas are as intoxicating as supersymmetry or as stupefying as extra dimensions, each leaving those who study them with more of a “watch this space” feeling than the “eureka” that Archimedes enjoyed. Variously, they’re not radical enough, too radical or simply not to taste. No Goldilocks moment just yet. However, in my view these issues are cause for hope. In similar moments in the past, we have been essentially on the right track, having to wait a little longer than expected for the confirming experimental data (top quark). At other times, the right ideas have been too radical for most to stomach in one sitting (quantum mechanics). Yet for others the correct approaches languished in relative obscurity far too long, simply for not being à la mode (quantum field theory). Look up the citation records of the original Brout-Englert, Higgs, Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble papers or Weinberg’s “A Model of Leptons”, all foundational to the physics of the Higgs boson, and you’ll see they are important cases in point that we would do well to remember. Nature made no promises that understanding the origins of the Higgs should have been easy, nor should it be in the future, but history teaches that those who explore relentlessly and fearlessly are often the ones rewarded with the greatest prize of all: the truth.

Where will all this go in coming years? Will we be tenacious enough to build the accelerator, the detectors and the village it will take to measure the Higgs self-attraction or discover the fuzziness of the Higgs? Will some plucky theorists unlock the door to the fundamental theory beyond the SM? Will future phenomenologists lay the first foundational stones on the path to discovering it?

As Dennis Gabor, the inventor of holography, put it: “The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.” We’re working on it.

See the full article here.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

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Meet CERN in a variety of places:

Quantum Diaries

Cern Courier

THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

ATLAS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS.

ALICE
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

CMS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CMS.

LHCb
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

LHC

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube.

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

CERN SixTrack LHC particles.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire)(EU), known as CERN, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, the organization is based in a northwest suburb of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and has 23 member states. Israel is the only non-European country granted full membership. CERN is an official United Nations Observer.

The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory, which in 2019 had 2,660 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,400 users from institutions in more than 70 countries. In 2016 CERN generated 49 petabytes of data.

CERN’s main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research – as a result, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. The main site at Meyrin hosts a large computing facility, which is primarily used to store and analyse data from experiments, as well as simulate events. Researchers need remote access to these facilities, so the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

The convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe. The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current Organization Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Organization for Nuclear Research)(EU) in 1954. According to Lew Kowarski, a former director of CERN, when the name was changed, the abbreviation could have become the awkward OERN, and Werner Heisenberg said that this could “still be CERN even if the name is [not]”.

CERN’s first president was Sir Benjamin Lockspeiser. Edoardo Amaldi was the general secretary of CERN at its early stages when operations were still provisional, while the first Director-General (1954) was Felix Bloch.

The laboratory was originally devoted to the study of atomic nuclei, but was soon applied to higher-energy physics, concerned mainly with the study of interactions between subatomic particles. Therefore, the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics (Laboratoire européen pour la physique des particules), which better describes the research being performed there.

Founding members

At the sixth session of the CERN Council, which took place in Paris from 29 June – 1 July 1953, the convention establishing the organization was signed, subject to ratification, by 12 states. The convention was gradually ratified by the 12 founding Member States: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and “Yugoslavia”.

Scientific achievements

Several important achievements in particle physics have been made through experiments at CERN. They include:

1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber.
1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments.
1989: The determination of the number of light neutrino families at the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) operating on the Z boson peak.
1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment.
1999: The discovery of direct CP violation in the NA48 experiment.
2010: The isolation of 38 atoms of antihydrogen.
2011: Maintaining antihydrogen for over 15 minutes.
2012: A boson with mass around 125 GeV/c2 consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson.

In September 2011, CERN attracted media attention when the OPERA Collaboration reported the detection of possibly faster-than-light neutrinos. Further tests showed that the results were flawed due to an incorrectly connected GPS synchronization cable.

The 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that resulted in the discoveries of the W and Z bosons. The 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber”. The 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs for the theoretical description of the Higgs mechanism in the year after the Higgs boson was found by CERN experiments.

Computer science

The World Wide Web began as a CERN project named ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 and Robert Cailliau in 1990. Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honoured by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web.

Current complex

CERN operates a network of six accelerators and a decelerator. Each machine in the chain increases the energy of particle beams before delivering them to experiments or to the next more powerful accelerator. Currently (as of 2019) active machines are:

The LINAC 3 linear accelerator generating low energy particles. It provides heavy ions at 4.2 MeV/u for injection into the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR).
The Proton Synchrotron Booster increases the energy of particles generated by the proton linear accelerator before they are transferred to the other accelerators.
The Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) accelerates the ions from the ion linear accelerator LINAC 3, before transferring them to the Proton Synchrotron (PS). This accelerator was commissioned in 2005, after having been reconfigured from the previous Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR).
The 28 GeV Proton Synchrotron (PS), built during 1954—1959 and still operating as a feeder to the more powerful SPS.
The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), a circular accelerator with a diameter of 2 kilometres built in a tunnel, which started operation in 1976. It was designed to deliver an energy of 300 GeV and was gradually upgraded to 450 GeV. As well as having its own beamlines for fixed-target experiments (currently COMPASS and NA62), it has been operated as a proton–antiproton collider (the SppS collider), and for accelerating high energy electrons and positrons which were injected into the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP). Since 2008, it has been used to inject protons and heavy ions into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The On-Line Isotope Mass Separator (ISOLDE), which is used to study unstable nuclei. The radioactive ions are produced by the impact of protons at an energy of 1.0–1.4 GeV from the Proton Synchrotron Booster. It was first commissioned in 1967 and was rebuilt with major upgrades in 1974 and 1992.
The Antiproton Decelerator (AD), which reduces the velocity of antiprotons to about 10% of the speed of light for research of antimatter.[50] The AD machine was reconfigured from the previous Antiproton Collector (AC) machine.
The AWAKE experiment, which is a proof-of-principle plasma wakefield accelerator.
The CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) accelerator research and development facility.

Large Hadron Collider

Many activities at CERN currently involve operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments for it. The LHC represents a large-scale, worldwide scientific cooperation project.

The LHC tunnel is located 100 metres underground, in the region between the Geneva International Airport and the nearby Jura mountains. The majority of its length is on the French side of the border. It uses the 27 km circumference circular tunnel previously occupied by the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP), which was shut down in November 2000. CERN’s existing PS/SPS accelerator complexes are used to pre-accelerate protons and lead ions which are then injected into the LHC.

Eight experiments (CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, MoEDAL, TOTEM, LHCf, FASER and ALICE) are located along the collider; each of them studies particle collisions from a different aspect, and with different technologies. Construction for these experiments required an extraordinary engineering effort. For example, a special crane was rented from Belgium to lower pieces of the CMS detector into its cavern, since each piece weighed nearly 2,000 tons. The first of the approximately 5,000 magnets necessary for construction was lowered down a special shaft at 13:00 GMT on 7 March 2005.

The LHC has begun to generate vast quantities of data, which CERN streams to laboratories around the world for distributed processing (making use of a specialized grid infrastructure, the LHC Computing Grid). During April 2005, a trial successfully streamed 600 MB/s to seven different sites across the world.

The initial particle beams were injected into the LHC August 2008. The first beam was circulated through the entire LHC on 10 September 2008, but the system failed 10 days later because of a faulty magnet connection, and it was stopped for repairs on 19 September 2008.

The LHC resumed operation on 20 November 2009 by successfully circulating two beams, each with an energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The challenge for the engineers was then to try to line up the two beams so that they smashed into each other. This is like “firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other” according to Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology.

On 30 March 2010, the LHC successfully collided two proton beams with 3.5 TeV of energy per proton, resulting in a 7 TeV collision energy. However, this was just the start of what was needed for the expected discovery of the Higgs boson. When the 7 TeV experimental period ended, the LHC revved to 8 TeV (4 TeV per proton) starting March 2012, and soon began particle collisions at that energy. In July 2012, CERN scientists announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle that was later confirmed to be the Higgs boson.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH) ATLAS Higgs Event June 18, 2012.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)CMS Higgs Event May 27, 2012.

Peter Higgs – University of Edinburgh [Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann] (SCT).

In March 2013, CERN announced that the measurements performed on the newly found particle allowed it to conclude that this is a Higgs boson. In early 2013, the LHC was deactivated for a two-year maintenance period, to strengthen the electrical connections between magnets inside the accelerator and for other upgrades.

On 5 April 2015, after two years of maintenance and consolidation, the LHC restarted for a second run. The first ramp to the record-breaking energy of 6.5 TeV was performed on 10 April 2015. In 2016, the design collision rate was exceeded for the first time. A second two-year period of shutdown begun at the end of 2018.

Accelerators under construction

As of October 2019, the construction is on-going to upgrade the LHC’s luminosity in a project called High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).

This project should see the LHC accelerator upgraded by 2026 to an order of magnitude higher luminosity.

As part of the HL-LHC upgrade project, also other CERN accelerators and their subsystems are receiving upgrades. Among other work, the LINAC 2 linear accelerator injector was decommissioned, to be replaced by a new injector accelerator, the LINAC4 in 2020.

Possible future accelerators

CERN, in collaboration with groups worldwide, is investigating two main concepts for future accelerators: A linear electron-positron collider with a new acceleration concept to increase the energy (CLIC) and a larger version of the LHC, a project currently named Future Circular Collider.

CERN CLIC collider

CERN FCC Future Circular Collider details of proposed 100km-diameter successor to LHC.

Not discussed or described, but worthy of consideration is the ILC, International Linear Collider in the planning stages for construction in Japan.

ILC schematic, being planned for the Kitakami highland, in the Iwate prefecture of northern Japan.

Participation

Since its foundation by 12 members in 1954, CERN regularly accepted new members. All new members have remained in the organization continuously since their accession, except Spain and Yugoslavia. Spain first joined CERN in 1961, withdrew in 1969, and rejoined in 1983. Yugoslavia was a founding member of CERN but quit in 1961. Of the 23 members, Israel joined CERN as a full member on 6 January 2014, becoming the first (and currently only) non-European full member.

Enlargement

Associate Members, Candidates:

Turkey signed an association agreement on 12 May 2014 and became an associate member on 6 May 2015.
Pakistan signed an association agreement on 19 December 2014 and became an associate member on 31 July 2015.
Cyprus signed an association agreement on 5 October 2012 and became an associate Member in the pre-stage to membership on 1 April 2016.
Ukraine signed an association agreement on 3 October 2013. The agreement was ratified on 5 October 2016.
India signed an association agreement on 21 November 2016. The agreement was ratified on 16 January 2017.
Slovenia was approved for admission as an Associate Member state in the pre-stage to membership on 16 December 2016. The agreement was ratified on 4 July 2017.
Lithuania was approved for admission as an Associate Member state on 16 June 2017. The association agreement was signed on 27 June 2017 and ratified on 8 January 2018.
Croatia was approved for admission as an Associate Member state on 28 February 2019. The agreement was ratified on 10 October 2019.
Estonia was approved for admission as an Associate Member in the pre-stage to membership state on 19 June 2020. The agreement was ratified on 1 February 2021.

From “Physics Today” : “Charming particle has a record-breaking lifetime”

From “Physics Today”

8.9.22
Heather M. Hill

Four quarks form a particle that outlives other exotic matter.

Tetraquarks-School of Physics and Astronomy – The University of Edinburgh (SCT).

[For display only as the tetraquark pictured in the article would not copy and paste.]

When quarks come together to form composite particles known as hadrons, they’re typically trios or quark–antiquark pairs. Although the possibility of more complex structures was hypothesized in the 1970s, it took about 30 years to find the first confirmed particle with four quarks. In the intervening years, researchers have observed nearly two dozen so-called tetraquarks and even several pentaquarks (see the Quick Study by Steve Olsen, Physics Today, September 2014, page 56). Those exotic particles offer a window to a particular regime of quantum chromodynamics, which describes the strong force (see the article by Frank Wilczek, Physics Today, August 2000, page 22).

Quantum chromodynamics readily predicts the behaviors of high-energy particles, but at the lower energies found for quarks in hadrons, it struggles. At those energies, experiments, in particular on exotic particles, are a better guide. Now the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration has identified a new tetraquark with an impressively long lifetime.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

The tetraquark—composed of two charm quarks, an up antiquark, and a down antiquark—is promising for future research and hints at the existence of a similar particle of even greater interest.

For the data set of proton–proton collisions at the LHC between 2011 and 2018, the LHCb collaboration found a sharp peak in the mass spectrum of events with two DØ mesons and a π+ meson, the decay products of the proposed tetraquark. The peak corresponds to a particle mass of about 3875 MeV and falls just below the value for the summed masses of a DØ meson, which comprises a charm quark and an up antiquark, and a D*+ meson, which comprises a charm quark and a down antiquark.

The signal isn’t noise or chance—the statistical significance is more than 22σ. And the lifetime, as determined from the inverse of the peak’s width, is the longest of the tetraquarks found thus far. Most decay in just 10^−23 seconds, a lifetime the new tetraquark outlasts by two orders of magnitude. A longer lifetime and corresponding narrower signal peak make detecting the particle’s properties easier and more accurate.

The four quarks could take two different structures: together in a single compact cluster or in two separated lobes, akin to a diatomic molecule but made of a DØ and a D*+ meson. So far, the LHCb results aren’t conclusive but suggest a molecule-type structure.

Values for the tetraquark’s quantum numbers are among the next tasks for the collaboration. The researchers also hope, inspired by their result, that they might find a tetraquark in which the charm quarks are replaced with two beauty quarks. The beauty version of the tetraquark is predicted to be stable with respect to the strong interaction, so its decay would happen even more slowly through the weak interaction. (R. Aaij et al., LHCb collaboration, Nat. Phys. 18, 751, 2022 [below]; R. Aaij et al., LHCb collaboration, Nat. Commun. 13, 3351, 2022 [below].)

Nature Physics
Nature Communications

See the full article here .

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“Our mission

The mission of ”Physics Today” is to be a unifying influence for the diverse areas of physics and the physics-related sciences.

It does that in three ways:

• by providing authoritative, engaging coverage of physical science research and its applications without regard to disciplinary boundaries;
• by providing authoritative, engaging coverage of the often complex interactions of the physical sciences with each other and with other spheres of human endeavor; and
• by providing a forum for the exchange of ideas within the scientific community.”

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]: “Higgs10:: Ten things we’ve learned about the Higgs boson in the past ten years”

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH) [CERN].

From The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN]

19 July, 2022

Monica Dunford
André David

_______________________________________________
Higgs

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH) ATLAS Higgs Event June 18, 2012.

European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)CMS Higgs Event May 27, 2012.

Peter Higgs – University of Edinburgh [Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann] (SCT).

_______________________________________________

Since its discovery in 2012, the Higgs boson has become one of the most powerful tools to probe our understanding of nature and, with that, examine some of the biggest open questions in physics today. But what have we physicists learned about the particle in the past ten years?

At the Higgs discovery announcement, CERN Director General Rolf Heuer congratulates François Englert and Peter Higgs, who would later receive the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical description of the origin of mass—which was confirmed by the Higgs boson detection.

1. A scalar particle exists in nature

During the early hours of 4 July 2012, the foyer outside the main CERN lecture hall looked more like the lead-up to a rock concert than the main building of the world’s leading particle physics lab. Dozens of groggy-eyed students slowly rolled up their sleeping bags, stretching out after a long night on the hard floor. A line hundreds long snaked through the foyer, around the restaurant and out the door. The excitement in the line was pulsating – even though the odds of making it into the auditorium were small, just to be there was a thrill. We had found it. A scalar particle existed in nature and 4 July 2012 was its debut.

2. It’s heavy and short-lived

The first measurements of the new scalar particle, H(125), relied on two experimental channels: 4-lepton decays and 2-photon decays. Although these are not the most abundant decay channels, they are the best in determining the scalar particle’s mass. The measured mass of about 125 GeV is maximally interesting: it is much heavier than was expected for popular models of supersymmetry, it puts the universe in a precarious position between being stable and metastable, and it has a rich phenomenology. In contrast to its heavy mass, the particle’s lifetime is short; it is gone in 1/10^22 of a second.

3. It has no electric charge and no spin

The discovery of the H(125) via its decay to two photons immediately established that the new particle had no electric charge and strongly disfavoured it to have spin of 1. The exact spin of the new particle can be probed by examining the angular distributions of the final-state products in decays to two protons, two W bosons and two Z bosons. The spin 0 hypothesis has held up against a myriad of other possible assignments.

4. It interacts with other bosons

How the new boson interacts with other particles can be probed in both how it decays and how it is produced. With its discovery via decays to two photons and two Z bosons, it was readily concluded that the H(125) particle couples to bosons (in the case of photons, indirectly). This was further reaffirmed with measurements of decays to two W bosons. Furthermore, the production of the H(125) through couplings to bosons is measured when two vector bosons (force carriers such as W and Z bosons) fuse to produce the scalar or when the scalar radiates from a heavy boson (so-called V+H production).

5. It interacts with fermions

The Standard Model (SM) predicts that the strength of the coupling between the H(125) and other particles is proportional to their masses. Studying fermions tests these couplings over three fermion generations spanning three orders of magnitude of masses. For the heaviest fermions, all couplings have been measured – to top quarks (via measurements of ttH production), to beauty quarks and to tau leptons. Now, the experimental challenge lies in reaching the second generation, whose coupling with the Higgs boson is weaker. First evidence of decays to muons are emerging and both the ATLAS and CMS experiments are homing in on decays to charm quarks.

6. It could be a portal for dark matter

If dark matter consists of elementary particle(s), the SM simply does not predict any of them. If the H(125) and dark matter particles interact in nature, one possible signature is that of “invisible” Higgs boson decays. Such searches limit these decays to be lower than 15% and, consequently, set limits on interactions between this Higgs boson and possible dark matter particles and on the models that predict them. The SM predicts only a diminutive branching fraction of 0.1% – to four neutrinos.

7. It may touch the structure of the universe

The inclusion of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism in the SM leads to precise predictions of how the universe evolved during one of its earliest stages, the electroweak epoch. A scalar field can influence several aspects of cosmology and even play a role in the observed matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Depending on the shape of the vacuum potential, the universe could be metastable and decay, and one way to probe this shape is to measure the different ways in which the H(125) interacts with itself. One of the signatures that can be used to access this self-interaction is the production of Higgs boson pairs. While existing analyses of LHC data have already started to exclude some non-SM alternatives, more data and future accelerators – like Higgs factories – will allow us to explore this critical area.

8. It seems to be a lone child

The SM is minimalistic as far as scalars are concerned: it predicts one single elementary scalar particle, with distinct types of interactions. In straightforward extensions to the minimal SM, more than one Higgs boson is predicted, resulting in different sets of interactions. Therefore, a vigorous programme of searches for other Higgs bosons – lighter and heavier, neutral and charged (and doubly charged) – has been undertaken. With other possibilities being strongly reduced, H(125) is presently the only scalar we know of in nature.

9. It’s a new player in the team pushing past the Standard Model

This Higgs boson is the newest player joining the team of particles that we use to understand the nature of the universe. Matter–antimatter asymmetry, dark matter, unification of all forces; these are some of the questions where a coherent and precise exploration of the properties of particles like the Z and W bosons, the beauty and top quarks and now the H(125), probe energy regimes far beyond those directly accessible at colliders. One possibility is to extend the SM with generic interactions that represent the effect of particles and interactions beyond the direct reach of present colliders. Making use of all the information from H(125) and its team members in a consistent fashion may point us in the direction of the next standard model.

10. It’s just the beginning

While we have established several properties and interactions of the H(125), much remains to be learned about this Higgs boson. Far from just being the last prediction from the SM, the discovery of the H(125) and its singular scalar quality provides an important instrument to further our understanding of nature at its deepest. Is there really only one Higgs boson in nature? Do its properties differ from the SM predictions? Can it show us what is beyond the electroweak scale? Might it interact with dark matter particles? Will we be able to use it to measure the shape of the vacuum potential of the universe?

Ten years ago, before the discovery of this formidable tool, these questions were beyond our reach. The H(125) has opened new doors, inviting us to walk through.

Measurements of the interaction strength between the H(125) and some of the Standard Model particles. The red line represents the Standard Model expectation. Recent progress has increased the reach to second generations fermions, like the muon, and first results concerning charm quarks. (Image: ATLAS)

Limits on Higgs boson pair production, a process that is sensitive to the Higgs boson self-interaction and the shape of the Higgs potential. Results are presented as a function of time along with projections for the full HL-LHC dataset that should provide enough sensitivity to challenge the SM prediction (red horizontal line). (Image: CMS)

See the full article here.

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Meet CERN in a variety of places:

Quantum Diaries

Cern Courier

The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), CERN’s second-largest accelerator. (Image: Julien Ordan/CERN).

The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), CERN’s second-largest accelerator. (Image: Julien Ordan/CERN).

THE FOUR MAJOR PROJECT COLLABORATIONS

ATLAS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATLAS.

ALICE
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALICE.

CMS
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CMS.

LHCb
The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

LHC

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] map.

3D cut of the LHC dipole CERN LHC underground tunnel and tube.

The LHC magnets surround the beampipe along its 27 km circumference- Image CERN

CERN SixTrack LHC particles.

OTHER PROJECTS AT CERN

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AEGIS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALPHA Antimatter Factory.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ALPHA-g Detector.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AMS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ASACUSA.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ATRAP.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Antiproton Decelerator.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] AWAKE.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] BASE: Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] BASE instrument.

European Organization for Nuclear Research Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire)(EU) [CERN] BASE: Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CAST Axion Solar Telescope.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CLOUD.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] COMPASS.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] CRIS experiment.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] DIRAC.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] FASER experiment schematic.

CERN FASER is designed to study the interactions of high-energy neutrinos and search for new as-yet-undiscovered light and weakly interacting particles. Such particles are dominantly produced along the beam collision axis and may be long-lived particles, travelling hundreds of metres before decaying. The existence of such new particles is predicted by many models beyond the Standard Model that attempt to solve some of the biggest puzzles in physics, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of neutrino masses.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] GBAR.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] ISOLDE Looking down into the ISOLDE experimental hall.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCf.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] The MoEDAL experiment- a new light on the high-energy frontier.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] NA62.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] NA64.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] NTOF.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] TOTEM.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] UA9.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] The SPS’s new RF system.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] Proto Dune.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][ Organization européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organization für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] HiRadMat-High Radiation to Materials.

From “Symmetry”: “LHCb ramps up the search for dark photons”

From “Symmetry”

DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Wilson Hall.

DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory campus with world’s first x-ray laser- the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) unveiled in 2009.

07/19/22
Katrina Miller

A handful of physicists have prepared the LHCb detector for a more sophisticated dark matter search.

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Olena Shmahalo.

Researching subatomic particles is an involved process. It can take hundreds—if not thousands—of scientists and engineers to build an experiment, keep it up and running, and analyze the enormous amounts of data it collects. That means physicists are always on the lookout for ways to do more for free: to squeeze out as much physics as possible with the machinery that already exists. And that’s exactly what a handful of physicists have set out to do with the LHCb experiment at CERN.

The LHCb detector was originally designed to study a particle known as the beauty quark.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research [La Organización Europea para la Investigación Nuclear][Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire] [Europäische Organisation für Kernforschung](CH)[CERN] LHCb.

“But as time has gone on, people have seen just how much more we can do with the detector,” says Daniel Johnson, an LHCb collaborator based at MIT.

Johnson, along with a team of around 10 researchers from MIT, the University of Cincinnati and CERN, are leading LHCb’s search for dark matter, a hypothesized type of matter that, so far, has evaded detection.

“Dark matter forms this big fraction of matter in the universe,” says Johnson, who won an Ernest Rutherford early career fellowship through the University of Birmingham, where he will move next March, to help spearhead the search. “It’s got to be there because of the way that galaxies dance, but we just don’t have a particle to explain it.”

For decades, scientists have focused efforts on building increasingly larger experiments with improved sensitivity to observe a dark-matter particle interacting with the detector itself. These experiments are often tucked away deep underground to minimize other, more frequent, types of interactions that can mask potential dark-matter signals.

But these direct detection searches have yet to find anything. “And that’s not to say that they’re a failure,” Johnson says. “They’ve been extremely successful so far at telling us what dark matter isn’t.”

It is to say, however, that physicists may need to adopt more creative explanations as to what the elusive particle could be. One idea growing in popularity is that dark matter might not interact directly with ordinary matter at all. Instead, it might be part of a dark sector of particles and forces that exist completely separate from, but parallel to, those that make up the world we experience every day.

Physicists are hopeful that they can access this dark sector through something called a portal, a rare hypothetical process that establishes a connection between ordinary and so-called dark particles. The LHCb team is particularly interested in portal interactions that convert a dark photon into a regular photon, which will then decay into charged particles that can be detected.

Past efforts have ruled out the existence of dark photons with certain properties, but LHCb’s design puts it in a sweet spot to explore dark photons with masses and lifetimes that other experiments, so far, have not been sensitive to. Even better, observing these photons requires no upgrades to LHCb itself, says MIT graduate student Kate Richardson, who works closely with Johnson on the dark-photon search.

That’s not to say scientists haven’t made improvements to the experiment. Richardson, in particular, has been involved in updating the LHCb’s software trigger, an algorithm that makes a snap decision about whether to store or discard any particle activity occurring inside the detector. “We can’t keep everything that happens,” she says.

Though the experiment’s data storage rivals the size of Netflix servers, it holds only a small fraction of the data generated, Richardson says. “So we write code in the trigger to check if particles match certain requirements, like if they came from the same place and have a certain momentum, and keep those interactions to analyze later.”

Previously, the team used LHCb’s dataset to conduct a preliminary dark-photon search that looked for regular photons decaying into muon-antimuon pairs. The software trigger upgrade paves the way for them to search for an additional type of interaction: regular photons that decay into electron-antielectron pairs, which could originate from dark photons with much lighter masses. This new search, which will take place alongside the primary physics analyses of the experiment, will be in the data-taking stage through the end of 2025.

In the scenario that a dark-photon signal is found, further studies—both with the LHCb and other detectors—would need to confirm the result, since the search is the first of its kind to investigate dark photons at the masses and lifetimes that LHCb is sensitive to. In later runs, Richardson says, the software trigger could be reprogrammed to hone in on a more specific interaction signature, based on what mass and lifetime values seem promising after an analysis using the new data.

Both Johnson and Richardson are excited about what information their future results will add to the 89-year-long quest to understand the nature of dark matter. “Someone’s going to find it. Why can’t it be LHCb?” Johnson says.

When it is found, it’s going to turn physics as we know it on its head, he says. “It would be one of the biggest discoveries in the last hundred years. It would completely change the way we view our universe.”

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Dark Matter Background
Fritz Zwicky discovered Dark Matter in the 1930s when observing the movement of the Coma Cluster., Vera Rubin a Woman in STEM, denied the Nobel, some 30 years later, did most of the work on Dark Matter.

Fritz Zwicky.
Coma cluster via NASA/ESA Hubble, the original example of Dark Matter discovered during observations by Fritz Zwicky and confirmed 30 years later by Vera Rubin.
In modern times, it was astronomer Fritz Zwicky, in the 1930s, who made the first observations of what we now call dark matter. His 1933 observations of the Coma Cluster of galaxies seemed to indicated it has a mass 500 times more than that previously calculated by Edwin Hubble. Furthermore, this extra mass seemed to be completely invisible. Although Zwicky’s observations were initially met with much skepticism, they were later confirmed by other groups of astronomers.

Thirty years later, astronomer Vera Rubin provided a huge piece of evidence for the existence of dark matter. She discovered that the centers of galaxies rotate at the same speed as their extremities, whereas, of course, they should rotate faster. Think of a vinyl LP on a record deck: its center rotates faster than its edge. That’s what logic dictates we should see in galaxies too. But we do not. The only way to explain this is if the whole galaxy is only the center of some much larger structure, as if it is only the label on the LP so to speak, causing the galaxy to have a consistent rotation speed from center to edge.

Vera Rubin, following Zwicky, postulated that the missing structure in galaxies is dark matter. Her ideas were met with much resistance from the astronomical community, but her observations have been confirmed and are seen today as pivotal proof of the existence of dark matter.
Astronomer Vera Rubin at the Lowell Observatory in 1965, worked on Dark Matter (The Carnegie Institution for Science).

Vera Rubin, with Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) image tube spectrograph attached to the Kitt Peak 84-inch telescope, 1970.

Vera Rubin measuring spectra, worked on Dark Matter(Emilio Segre Visual Archives AIP SPL).
Dark Matter Research

Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search from DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University at SNOLAB (Vale Inco Mine, Sudbury, Canada).

LBNL LZ Dark Matter Experiment xenon detector at Sanford Underground Research Facility Credit: Matt Kapust.

Lamda Cold Dark Matter Accerated Expansion of The universe http scinotions.com the-cosmic-inflation-suggests-the-existence-of-parallel-universes. Credit: Alex Mittelmann.

DAMA at Gran Sasso uses sodium iodide housed in copper to hunt for dark matter LNGS-INFN.

Yale HAYSTAC axion dark matter experiment at Yale’s Wright Lab.

DEAP Dark Matter detector, The DEAP-3600, suspended in the SNOLAB (CA) deep in Sudbury’s Creighton Mine.

The LBNL LZ Dark Matter Experiment Dark Matter project at SURF, Lead, SD.

DAMA-LIBRA Dark Matter experiment at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ (INFN’s) Gran Sasso National Laboratories (LNGS) located in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.

DARWIN Dark Matter experiment. A design study for a next-generation, multi-ton dark matter detector in Europe at The University of Zurich [Universität Zürich](CH).

PandaX II Dark Matter experiment at Jin-ping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, China.

Inside the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment U Washington (US) Credit : Mark Stone U. of Washington. Axion Dark Matter Experiment.
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Symmetry is a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication.