The Higgs boson discovery, 10 years later
Abigail Malate for Physics Today
On 4 July 2012, physicists around the world gathered in homes, offices, and conference rooms to watch the announcement in Geneva of the discovery of a particle that very much resembled the Higgs boson, the long-sought capstone of the standard model (SM) of particle physics.
The benefit of 10 intervening years provides an opportunity to reflect on the historic achievement and its impact. In a new essay, historian Michael Riordan examines how CERN assembled an international collaboration to build the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and complete the decades-long search for the elusive particle. Physicists Haider Abidi, Heather Gray, and Martina Ojeda summarize the current state of Higgs boson physics and its implications for beyond-SM theories, future planned accelerator facilities, and even the stability of the universe. Finally, University of Wisconsin–Madison physicist Sau Lan Wu, who was integral in the discoveries of the J/ψ particle and the gluon before setting her sights on the Higgs boson, describes her experience in the days leading up to the July 2012 announcement. Also be sure to explore Physics Today‘s coverage of the Higgs boson over the years, going back to Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg’s 1977 discussion of the future of unified gauge theories.
So far, the particle discovered a decade ago appears to be a spot-on match of the boson predicted by the SM. The imminent third run of the LHC may bolster that argument. Or perhaps the new, enhanced data set will reveal subtle discrepancies between experiment and theory that will at last lead to the expansion or revision of the frustratingly successful SM.
— Andrew Grant, Online Editor, Physics Today
NEWCERN’s Higgs boson discovery: The pinnacle of international scientific collaboration?
2013Englert and Higgs are awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics
2012The Higgs particle, or something much like it, has been spotted
Original theory and discovery papers
- F. Englert, R. Brout, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 321 (1964)
- P. W. Higgs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 508 (1964)
- G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, T. W. B. Kibble, Phys. Rev. Lett. 13, 585 (1964)
- ATLAS collaboration, Phys. Lett. B 716, 1 (2012)
- CMS collaboration, Phys. Lett. B 716, 30 (2012)