In 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson * the quantum excitation of the scalar field responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking within the Standard Model of particle physics. This long-sought particle provides direct evidence for the Higgs mechanism, which explains how elementary particles acquire mass through their interaction with the...
The Higgs boson was discovered 48 years after its postulation based on symmetry principles that are required to hold at the quantum level. It plays a central role in our understanding of the Universe: Through its couplings to all massive particles and as a door opener to dark sectors, it is able to give us answers to our most pressing open questions. These include the nature of Dark Matter and...
The announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson on July 4, 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the European Research Centre for particle physics, CERN in Geneva, marked an important milestone in the research on the fundamental building blocks of matter and the forces acting between them, and on the verification of quantum field theory-based predictions of the Standard Model of...
At the heart of the Standard Model of particle physics lies the Higgs boson – an exceptional elementary particle distinguished not only by its spin-0 nature. It plays a crucial role within the quantum realm of particle physics in generating the masses of gauge bosons, fermions, and even itself. The Higgs boson is deeply connected to fundamental questions in quantum physics, the early stages of...
At the core of nearly every current or planned particle detector lies a silicon-based tracking system capable of reconstructing the momenta of particles produced in high-energy collisions.
The continuous advancement of tracking systems, from a few electronic channels three decades ago to the many millions in today's detectors, has been a key enabler of our current understanding of nature....
In the context of the requirements of future particle physics experiments, quantum sensors look likely to play a central role. Among the wide range of possible quantum sensors, five technological axes (Quantum systems in traps and beams; Low-dimensional quantum materials; Superconducting quantum devices; Macroscopic scaled-up quantum systems; Quantum techniques for sensing) look particularly...
The ability to detect single photons is crucial for quantum optics as well as for a wide number of applications. Several technologies have been developed for efficient single photon detection in the visible and near infrared. The invention of the superconducting nanowire single photon detector in 2001 enabled the development of a new class of detectors that can operate close to physical...
