Back in September 2022, four months after the start of the LHC Run 3, the CMS collaboration released the first measurement using data at the new collision energy of 13.6 TeV. Using the data recorded only in two months – less than 1% of the LHC goal…

Even after almost 30 years since its discovery, the top quark is still offering unprecedented opportunities to improve our understanding of nature. It is the heaviest known elementary particle and its special features help us understand the…

One of the events determined by the AI algorithm to be highly anomalous and therefore potentially coming from a new particle. The central jet shows particles clustered around two different cores within the cone, a configuration distinct from a…

  In quantum electrodynamics (QED), the quantum theory of electromagnetic interactions, the magnetic dipole moment of a particle acquires quantum corrections originating from interactions with virtual photons and other particles, often referred…

The Higgs boson was one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the last decades and opened the doors to a new era for particle physics: unveiling its mysteries and measuring its properties. We already know a lot about how the Higgs boson is…

More than a decade after the discovery of the Higgs boson, we still expect this particle to give us first-hand information about theories that can solve some of the shortcomings of the standard model of particle physics (SM). For example, the…

Event display for a potential SUEP event, recorded at CMS in 2018, showing the characteristically high multiplicity of soft tracks in yellow. Could there be a “dark world“ composed of invisible particles held together by a new strong dark force,…

Neutron stars, ultra-cold atomic gasses, and the quark-gluon plasma… You may find them totally unrelated but, surprisingly enough, they share a common feature: a fluid-like state of matter containing strongly interacting particles! An insight into…

A proton-proton collision at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, recorded by CMS, compatible with the production of a Higgs boson decaying to a J/ψ meson, which decays to two muons (red lines), and a high-energy photon (green box, top). Try to zoom…

The universe is governed by four known fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. The strong force is responsible for dynamics on an extremely small scale, within and between the individual nucleons of…

The main goal of the LHC physics programme is to deeply understand the fundamental principles of particles and their interactions. As part of this quest, physicists are searching for evidence of new particles, which would potentially confirm the…

Imagine diving into the very core of the universe, where the tiniest pieces that make up everything hold the answers to big cosmic questions. Leading this exciting journey is the CMS team at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We are on a mission to…