PARTICLE FEVER

(a 2013 documentary film)

Particle Fever follows the inside story of six brilliant scientists seeking to unravel the
mysteries of the universe, documenting the successes and setbacks in the planet’s most
significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough.
One goal of the LHC project is to understand the fundamental structure of matter by re-
creating the extreme conditions that occurred in the first few moments of the universe according
to the big-bang model. For decades physicists have used the so-called standard model for
fundamental particles, which has worked well but has weaknesses. First, and most important, it
does not explain why some particles have mass. In the 1960s British physicist Peter Higgs
postulated a particle that had interacted with other particles at the beginning of time to provide
them with their mass. The Higgs boson had never been observed—it should be produced only by
collisions in an energy range not available for experiments before the LHC.
Following the world’s most powerful particle accelerator switched on, causing great
excitement, just nine days later a helium leak shut the LHC down. An electrical connection
melted during a test to make sure the equipment could handle the high currents needed to power
the LHC's huge superconducting magnets. That failure damaged the plumbing that pipes liquid
helium around the system to keep the superconducting magnets at a chilly -271 °C. Large
amounts of helium vaporised, causing several magnets to heat up and damaging nearby
equipment with the sudden burst of pressure. Two of the most severely damaged connections
carry electricity between separate cryostats that contain the magnets. These connections would
usually be straight, but have been buckled by the helium leak. The cryostats contain a vacuum to
help keep them cool. When helium rushed into that void, the burst of pressure caused some of
them to move by half a meter. Some of the magnet supports were even ripped from the ground
by the burst of pressure. Release valves designed to let leaking gas escape could not let it out fast
enough to prevent the damage.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), world’s most powerful particle accelerator consists of
a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to
boost the energy of the particles along the way. The LHC was constructed by the European
Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the same 27-km (17-mile) tunnel that housed its
Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP). The tunnel is circular and is located 50–175 metres
(165–575 feet) below ground, on the border between France and Switzerland. Inside the
accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are
made to collide. The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes – two tubes kept
at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field
maintained by superconducting electromagnets. The electromagnets are built from coils of
special electric cable that operates in a superconducting state, efficiently conducting electricity
without resistance or loss of energy. This requires chilling the magnets to -271.3°C – a
temperature colder than outer space. For this reason, much of the accelerator is connected to a
distribution system of liquid helium, which cools the magnets, as well as to other supply
services. Thousands of magnets of different varieties and sizes are used to direct the beams
around the accelerator. These include 1232 dipole magnets 15 metres in length which bend the
beams, and 392 quadrupole magnets, each 5–7 metres long, which focus the beams. Just prior to
collision, another type of magnet is used to "squeeze" the particles closer together to increase the
chances of collisions. The particles are so tiny that the task of making them collide is akin to
firing two needles 10 kilometres apart with such precision that they meet halfway.
 The experiments (ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb) will exploit the full potential of the
collider to discover and explore new physics beyond the Standard Model. The biggest of these
experiments, ATLAS and CMS, use general-purpose detectors to investigate the largest range of
physics possible. Having two independently designed detectors is vital for cross-confirmation of
any new discoveries made. ALICE and LHCb have detectors specialised for focussing on
specific phenomena. These four detectors sit underground in huge caverns on the LHC ring.
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is a detector dedicated to heavy-ion physics at the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at
extreme energy densities, where a phase of matter called quark-gluon plasma forms. ATLAS is
one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It investigates a wide
range of physics, from the search for the Higgs boson to extra dimensions and particles that
could make up dark matter. Although it has the same scientific goals as the CMS experiment, it
uses different technical solutions and a different magnet-system design. The Compact Muon
Solenoid (CMS) is a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It has a broad
physics programme ranging from studying the Standard Model (including the Higgs boson) to
searching for extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter. Although it has the
same scientific goals as the ATLAS experiment, it uses different technical solutions and a
different magnet-system design. The Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment
specializes in investigating the slight differences between matter and antimatter by studying a
type of particle called the "beauty quark", or "b quark". Instead of surrounding the entire
collision point with an enclosed detector as do ATLAS and CMS, the LHCb experiment uses a
series of subdetectors to detect mainly forward particles – those thrown forwards by the collision
in one direction. The first subdetector is mounted close to the collision point, with the others
following one behind the other over a length of 20 metres.
In the 1970s, physicists realised that there are very close ties between two of the four
fundamental forces – the weak force and the electromagnetic force. The two forces can be
described within the same theory, which forms the basis of the Standard Model. This
“unification” implies that electricity, magnetism, light and some types of radioactivity are all
manifestations of a single underlying force known as the electroweak force.
The basic equations of the unified theory correctly describe the electroweak force and its
associated force-carrying particles, namely the photon, and the W and Z bosons, except for a
major glitch. All of these particles emerge without a mass. While this is true for the photon, we
know that the W and Z have mass, nearly 100 times that of a proton. Fortunately, theorists
Robert Brout, François Englert and Peter Higgs made a proposal that was to solve this problem.
What we now call the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism gives a mass to the W and Z when they
interact with an invisible field, now called the “Higgs field”, which pervades the universe.
Just after the big bang, the Higgs field was zero, but as the universe cooled and the
temperature fell below a critical value, the field grew spontaneously so that any particle
interacting with it acquired a mass. The more a particle interacts with this field, the heavier it is.
Particles like the photon that do not interact with it are left with no mass at all. Like all
fundamental fields, the Higgs field has an associated particle – the Higgs boson. The Higgs
boson is the visible manifestation of the Higgs field, rather like a wave at the surface of the sea.
On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider
announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 125.3 GeV. This
particle is consistent with the Higgs boson but it will take further work to determine whether or
not it is the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. Higgs boson, also called Higgs
particle, particle that is the carrier particle, or boson, of the Higgs field, a field that permeates
space and endows all elementary subatomic particles with mass through its interactions with
them. The field and the particle—named after Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, one of
the physicists who in 1964 first proposed the mechanism—provided a testable hypothesis for the
origin of mass in elementary particles. In popular culture the Higgs boson is often called the
“God particle,” The Higgs field is different from other fundamental fields—such as the
electromagnetic field—that underlie the basic forces between particles. First, it is a scalar field;
i.e., it has magnitude but no direction. This implies that its carrier, the Higgs boson, has an
intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, of 0, unlike the carriers of the force fields, which have spin.
Second, the Higgs field has the unusual property that its energy is higher when the field is zero
than when it is nonzero. The elementary particles therefore acquired their masses through
interactions with a nonzero Higgs field only when the universe cooled and became less energetic
in the aftermath of the big bang (the hypothetical primal explosion in which the universe
originated). The variety of masses characterizing the elementary subatomic particles arises
because different particles have different strengths of interaction with the Higgs field. To be able
to understand Higgs, let’s put it in perspective.
An average person could wander through the crowd with ease. But a
more popular figure would be mobbed as soon as he or she entered the room,
making passage more difficult. The party-goers represent the Higgs field, and
the people walking through the crowd represent particles to which the field
gives mass. A person who is significantly impeded by interested guests is like
a particle given a large mass by the Higgs field. An excitation of the Higgs
field is a Higgs boson. You can picture this as a bump that travels down a
rope when you twitch one end of it, as the TED-Ed animation suggests.
In a cocktail party, this kind of excitation might move through the
crowd if a rumor spread from one end to the other (illustrated above). People
nearest the rumor-originator would lean in to hear it. They would then pass it
along to their neighbors, drawing together a new clump of people, and then
return to their original positions to discuss it. The compression of the crowd
would move from one end of the room to the other, like a Higgs boson in a
Higgs field. Another variation on this theme: Imagine a room full of
physicists. Suddenly Einstein enters and attempts to cross the room, but the
star-struck physicists cluster around him and impede his movements,
effectively increasing his mass. Now imagine that I enter the room. As a
lowly grad student, nobody wants to interact with me, so I pass through the
physicists relatively unimpeded—no effective mass for me! Lastly, imagine
that somebody whispers a rumor, causing the physicists to cluster together
excitedly on their own. In this analogy, the room full of physicists represents
the Higgs field in space, Einstein represents a particle with high mass, I
represent a particle with low mass (or no mass), and a cluster of physicists
represents an excitation of the field, which is effectively a Higgs boson.
The scientific advancements of CERN push the frontiers of technology, which has a
positive impact on society globally. Although the core mission of the Laboratory is fundamental
research in particle physics, it also has a remit to train the next generation of scientists and to
bring nations together. The transfer of CERN technologies and expertise to society is an integral
part of these activities, providing novel solutions in many fields. Contributing to a better planet,
with novel and more efficient technologies, industry 4.0, increasing automation and efficiency,
cultural heritage through art restoration and developing technologies expected to have significant
impact in the future
 “Places like CERN contribute to the kind of knowledge that not only enriches humanity,
but also provides the wellspring of ideas that become the technologies of the future.” — Fabiola
Gianotti, Director-General of CERN
Despite the successes, the standard model is certainly not the last word in the
understanding of particles. It is for instance inconsistent with cosmological models describing
the formation of the universe.
The LHC is searching for new fundamental particles that could explain these
discrepancies. These particles could be visible at the LHC, but hidden in the background of
particle interactions. Or they could show up as small quantum mechanical effects in known
processes. In either case, a better understanding of the strong force is needed to find them. With
each new hadron, we improve our knowledge of nature’s laws, leading us to a better description
of the most fundamental properties of matter.

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