CERN Accelerating science

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is operating again after its winter break.

A search is presented for a massive particle, generically referred to as a Z′, decaying into a t-tbar pair.

The production of b jets in association with a Z/γ^* boson is studied using proton-proton collisions delivered by the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and recorded by the CMS detector.

CMS has just recorded the first collisions with stable beams at a world-record collision energy of 8 TeV.

Results are presented from a search for heavy bottom-like quarks, produced in pairs in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV, undertaken with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The b′ quarks are assumed to decay exclusively to a top quark and a W boson (tW).

Results are presented from a search for new physics in which the final state contains a photon (γ) and missing transverse energy (ME_T).

A study of dijet production in proton-proton collisions was performed at √s = 7 TeV for jets with p_T > 35 GeV and |y| < 4.7[1] using data collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2010.

From the BBC: 'Jim [Al-Khalili] talks [to] CERN physicist, Tejinder Virdee about the search for the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle".

The LHC provides CMS with millions of collisions each second, and a wealth of physics data is obtained from the proton-proton interactions. In order to record all these data for analyses, all CMS sub-detectors have to be performing optimally.

On Monday, 12^th March 2012, 16 high-school students from Annecy, France awoke with excitement; they knew it was not going to be an ordinary day!