The Higgs Boson!
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MEET THE TIME MAGAZINE PARTICLE OF THE YEAR: THE HIGGS BOSON! Saptaparna Bhattacharya July 11th - 22nd, 2016 Symmetry Breaking Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking Stable equilibrium Unstable equilibrium Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking The pion decays to a neutrino and a muon. The muon is a stable particle that can be detected using a cloud chamber. Notice that the muon and the neutrino are of the same kind. This is a muon neutrino. There are electron and tau neutrinos that are produced when electrons and taus decay. These decay chains involve interactions different from the one shown here. Connecting this back to the cosmic ray story Muon decay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_interaction Connecting this back to the cosmic ray story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%27s_interaction What is this Higgs particle? ▪ While developing the modern theory of fundamental forces and interactions, physicists hit a snag ▪ Particles that carry forces had to be massless but the data seemed to say otherwise! UCSB/CERN ▪ And in fact, why do any particles have mass? What is mass? ▪ Massless particles move at the speed of light ▪ Speed of light: c = 186,000 miles/second ▪ E=mc2 if a particle of mass m is at rest. So E2=(mc2)2 ▪ But if a particle has momentum p then E2=(mc2)2+(pc)2 ▪ So, for a massless particle (m=0) you get E=pc ▪ This is the equation for a particle moving at the speed of light ▪ An ingenious idea: ▪ Suppose there is a force field filling the universe that somehow slows particles down to below the speed of light? ▪ This would make them have mass ! May 18, 2012 BoulderColorado 18, May Incandela J. Higgs Field Interaction Massive Particle UCSB/CERN May 18, 2012 BoulderColorado 18, May Incandela J. Courtesy of Stefan Spanier (UT) I found a very nice explanation of the Higgs field Don Lincoln https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joTKd5j3mzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IElHgJG5Fe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HneiEA1B8ks pp physics at the LHC corresponds to conditions around here UCSB/CERN HI physics at the LHC corresponds to conditions around here May 18, 2012 BoulderColorado 18, May Incandela J. LHC Physics Highlights Beyond the Higgs! May 18, 2012 Boulder Colorado J. Incandela UCSB/CERN From Joe’s talk Joe’s From Where the largest and smallestthings meet The Dark Side From Joe’s talk ▪ We now know that only ~5% of the energy in the universe is ordinary matter (remember E=mc2). ▪ 94% is dark matter ▪ SUSY theories can happily predict this amount UCSB/CERN ▪ There are other possibilities but SUSY is a favorite ▪ Provides great dark matter candidate May 18, 2012 BoulderColorado 18, May Incandela J. Supersymmetry (SUSY) From Joe’s talk ▪ An important very basic symmetry ▪ For each ½-integer spin particle (Fermion) there is an integer spin partner (Boson) and vice versa ◾Complete spectrum of partners to standard model particles ◾Their spins are different by ½ unit ◾They are heavier (or else we’d have seen them already). UCSB/CERN May 18, 2012 BoulderColorado 18, May Incandela J. WHY IS BEYOND THE STANDARD MODEL PHYSICS NEEDED? Running of couplings: no route to unification. SUSY offers a solution. Addresses the hierarchy problem. We know about ~27% of the universe is made up of dark matter from cosmological evidence. Supersymmetry offers a dark matter candidate. 16 SAPTAPARNA BHATTACHARYA, JULY, 29TH 2015 Feynman diagram of processes that produce DM Direct detection versus indirect detection https://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/lin/research_DM.en.html Production of dark matter http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/xmass/publist/20111104-moriyama-subaru3rd-proc.pdf Dark matter https://home.cern/about/physics/dark-matter Dark energy https://home.cern/about/physics/dark-matter Statistics of this class! • Over 10 GB of simulation files generated • Over 2000 lines of code written • About 30 emails exchanged for demonstrations, particle data group booklets etc. • About 350+ slides combining all lectures • About 560 plots generated.