LHC tagged posts

Scientists at CERN’s ATLAS experiment have uncovered compelling evidence of Higgs bosons decaying into muons, an incredibly rare event that could deepen our understanding of how particles acquire mass. They also sharpened their ability to detect the even rarer Higgs decay into a Z boson and a photon—a process that might reveal hidden physics beyond the Standard Model.

The ATLAS Collaboration finds evidence of Higgs-boson decays to muons and improves sensitivity to Higgs-boson decays to a Z boson and a photon.

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, physicists have made major strides in exploring its properties...

In a paper published in Physical Review C, the ALICE collaboration reports measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Transforming the base metal lead into the precious metal gold was a dream of medieval alchemists. This long-standing quest, known as chrysopoeia, may have been motivated by the observation that dull gray, relatively abundant lead is of a similar density to gold, which has long been coveted for its beautiful color and rarity. It was only much later that it became clear that lead and gold are distinct chemical elements and that chemical methods are powerless to transmute one into the other.

With the dawn of nuclear physics in the 20th century, it was discovered that heavy element...

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 slotted in the final missing piece of the Standard Model puzzle. Yet, it left lingering questions. What lies beyond this framework? Where are the new phenomena that would solve the universe’s remaining mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of matter-antimatter asymmetry?

One parameter that may hold clues about new physics phenomena is the “width” of the W boson, the electrically charged carrier of the weak force. A particle’s width is directly related to its lifetime and describes how it decays to other particles. If the W boson decays in unexpected ways, such as into yet-to-be-discovered new particles, these will influence the measured width.

As the Standard Model precisely predicts its value based on the strength o...

New findings lay the foundation for the search for dark matter. How are galaxies born, and what holds them together? Astronomers assume that dark matter plays an essential role. However, as yet it has not been possible to prove directly that dark matter exists. A research team including Technical University of Munich (TUM) scientists has now measured for the first time the survival rate of antihelium nuclei from the depths of the galaxy – a necessary prerequisite for the indirect search for Dark Matter.

Many things point to the existence of dark matter...