The interaction of the Higgs boson with its own field leads to its mass generation. Since the Higgs boson mass has already been measured, the study of the Higgs pair production at the LHC reveals directly the strength of the Higgs self coupling λHHH…
High-energy particle accelerators are unique tools to study the structure of matter at the shortest distances. The most powerful accelerator today is the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that has so far collided beams of protons up to center-of-mass…
For the first time, CMS physicists extract the fundamental parameters of QCD together with constraints on the New Physics.
Any tiny failure of the Standard Model to explain data behaviour is a possible window for the New Physics. An example is…
The most powerful particle collider in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was built in the 27 km tunnel originally excavated for the highest energy electron-positron collider ever built, LEP. As an extraordinarily sensitive machine, LEP was…
Using the golden decay channel to understand the production of the Higgs boson
The standard model of particle physics is currently the best way to describe interactions of fundamental particles that make up our Universe. It has been tested over many…
What does the decay of a bottom quark look like?
Fragmentation, also known as hadronization, is when particles that contain quarks or gluons create other particles via the strong interaction. The fragmentation process cannot be exactly calculated…
A shot in the dark: Can jets recoil against Dark Matter?
In their 2020 hit single ‘A Shot in the Dark’ the rock band AC/DC got it right in many ways:
“A shot in the dark
Make you feel alright
A shot in the dark
All through the whole night”
The…
Using machine learning to improve the detection of new physics in the interactions of the top quark
Although our theory describing the interactions between fundamental particles is exceptionally successful, it has weaknesses. You may have heard,…
Quarks are elementary particles in the Standard Model and the building blocks of the protons and neutrons in atoms. The dominant force between quarks is the strong interaction. Gluons are the force carriers of the strong interaction, and one thing…
In the LHC, groups of 100 billion protons collide 25 million times every second. But most of these protons miss, so each time we point the protons at each other doesn't give us 100 million proton-proton collisions. In fact, collisions are much,…
The CMS collaboration has submitted a paper with a new, precise analysis of the data enriched in the Higgs boson decays to four leptons. Simultaneous measurement of the Higgs boson production and decay was essential in this analysis.
The quantum…
Experimental evidence from the last half-century has established the standard model as a foundational theory of particle physics. Still, it is clear that the standard model is not the final theory. There are many open questions: Is the mass of Higgs…