awarded the prize to the four collaborations for " testing the modern theory of particle physics – the Standard Model – and other theories describing physics that might lie beyond it to high precision. This includes precisely measuring properties of the Higgs boson and elucidating the mechanism by which the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles”. The researchers receive the prize for the publications they wrote based on the LHC Run-2 data, which were collected between 2015 and 2018, and which to some extent are still being analyzed.
ATLAS
Researchers from uu77 made a significant contribution to ATLAS, one of the honored collaborations. ATLAS and CMS jointly announced the groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. The Higgs boson helps explain why other elementary particles get their mass, making it an essential component of the Standard Model.
Frank Filthaut, researcher at High Energy Physics, was involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012: "Discovering the Higgs boson was fantastic, but there remains much to investigate. For example: how exactly does the mechanism work by which the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles? How does it couple to other particles? We are trying to find answers to these and other questions."
Processing Complex Data
Radboud researchers have played a major role in reading out and calibrating the detectors, and in analyzing the data in LHC RUN-2. Filthaut: "In the LHC, protons are fired at each other, causing them to collide. As many of the interesting processes that we study are so rare, an enormous amount of data is needed for their precise study. The particle accelerator produces 40 million beam collisions per second. In each beam collision, approximately 50 individual proton-proton interactions occur."
In addition to calibrating the instruments and analyzing the data, the Radboud scientists are also working on building a new detector. With the new detector, the proton-proton interactions can be measured and analyzed with even greater precision.
Frank Filthaut: "I am proud of the prize, and find it a well-deserved recognition for all the hard work of all researchers, and the creativity and scientific and technological knowledge that goes into building the detectors and the data analyses."
Photo: Muon detector (8 m diameter), installed in 2021, which despite its seemingly modest size contains 16 layers of measuring elements with a precision of approximately 100 micrometers. Scientists from Nijmegen made a significant contribution to the readout of this advanced detector. Photo by Frank Filthaut
