SCIENCE REPORTER, NOVEMBER 2012

19
Big Bang
Proton
Atom
Radius of Earth
Earth to Sun
Radius of Galaxies
Universe
Dimensions in Physics and
energy density required
for probing matter at
various scales
KAJARI MAZUMDAR
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Intellectual
Threads Weaving
the Higgs Boson
Discovery
J
ULY 4, 2012 marks an important epoch
in the history of science as well as of
mankind in unraveling natures deep
secrets. The maj or experi ments at the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine at
CERN, ATLAS (A Toroidal Lhc ApparatuS)
and CMS (Compact Muon Sol enoi d),
announced the discovery of a particle of
mass about 125 GeV (Giga electron Volt,
roughly the mass of the proton) which is
likely to be the hitherto sought after Higgs
boson. The discovery marks the beginning
of an exciting era in the story of the LHC.
Manki nd has al ways been curi ous
about the fundamental building blocks of
matter and the basic forces at work among
them. The thirst for this knowledge goes
back to the era of the sages in our country
and is matched by the Greek philosophers
in identifying the so-called constituents of
the universe.
In the 19
th
century, it seemed as if there
were too many elements, starting with
hydrogen and goi ng beyond l ead,
uranium and so on, which make up the
world around us. By the turn of the 20th
century, it was known that there is unity in
diversity. We now know that there are only
very few fundamental particles that could
be classified into different categories in
broad ways, albeit, each being unique in
terms of its attributes. Our everyday matter
is made up of electrons and essentially
two types of quarks.
Soon after World War II, it was found
that there are heavier cousins of electrons
and the quarks which are unstable and
hence they can only be created artificially
by converting energy according to the
famous equation of E = mc
2
. An exception
is the case of muon, which is produced
naturally in cosmic ray showers and when
it carries high energy, the life time gets
dilated enough to reach the laboratories
on earth.
How has mans centuries-long search for the
fundamental particles and energies in nature led to this
historic moment in science?
Computer reconstructed candidate event for the two-
photon decay mode of Higgs boson. The large green
legos signify energetic photons while the yellow streaks
correspond to low energy charged particles produced in
the collision along with the Higgs boson.
L
H
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SCIENCE REPORTER, NOVEMBER 2012
20
As of today, four fundamental forces
are i denti fi ed: Gravi tati on,
Electromagnetic, Strong and Weak. The
gravitational and electromagnetic forces
are more evident in our daily lives being of
long range, while the other two are short
ranged. It was Einstein who established the
uni versal i ty of the gravi tati on l aws
governing massive objects on the earth as
well as in the universe.
Similarly, Maxwell put in electricity and
magnetism in a single fold through his
equati ons descri bi ng el ectromagneti c
interaction. Importantly, it is also realised
that there were much fewer number of
basic forces when the universe was much
younger and hotter. Summari l y, the
evolution of the universe in the very early
stage essentially deals with science of
smal l l ength scal es and hence
equivalently with high energies.
Probing the nature of the universe at
early stage is possible, within the purview
of particle physics, with powerful machines
provi di ng hi gh energy densi ty. Thi s
requirement is similar to the way one can
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Resonance structure observed in CMS experiment at 125 GeV. The blue and green contributions in the histogram
correspond to the background which are well reproduced in simulation indicating that the theoretical
understanding is sound.
Feature Article
SCIENCE REPORTER, NOVEMBER 2012
21
exami ne the structure of a substance
better wi th a sharper tool , l i ke a
sophisticated microscope. Thus, the study
of the universe within about a pico second
after the Big Bang becomes possible only
when an energy density of few hundred
GeV to few TeV (trillion electronvolts, roughly
the ki neti c energy of a fl y) can be
harnessed i n the l aborator y. The LHC
machine did this and hence acquired the
name the Big Bang machine.
The idea of beauty in simplicity had
been realised by humans at the early days
of formul ati ng the l aws of nature. The
mantra that played the key role was the
appreciation of symmetr y in physical
systems. Symmetry can be explicit as seen
in the roundness of a ball, but sometimes it
is hidden as in the case of a bar magnet.
The equations describing the interactions
of the tiny magnets inside a bar magnet
are symmetric under any arbitrary rotation,
but the magnetic field changes if the bar
magnet i s rotated. The search for
symmetr y al so l ed to the dogma of
conserved quantities. As noted early in 20th
century, conservation of momentum is a
consequence of translational symmetr y,
i .e., the system remai ns unchanged i f
ever y part in it is shifted by a constant
displacement.
The devel opment of several
revolutionar y ideas during 20th centur y,
from relativity to quantum mechanics to
the existence of antiparticle, played the
precursory role for a consistent and highly
tested quantum theor y of
electromagnetism, which is based on a
simple symmetry. The success is based on
the idea that electromagnetic interaction,
of infinite range, between two charged
particles is mediated by a carrier, the
photon. The symmetr y of the theor y
requires the photon to be massless.
This theory is further developed into a
combi ned descri pti on envel opi ng
el ectromagneti c, weak and strong
i nteracti ons, whi ch are the forces
operati ng between the fundamental
matter particles at the microscopic level.
Each of these forces is described by its
own symmetry and has its own mediators.
This theory, called the standard model of
particle physics, is capable of describing
nature down to the scale of 10
-18
metres.
The biggest puzzle was posed by the
mediators of the weak interaction. This
interaction, which is responsible for the
beta decay and for the burning of the sun,
is effective only at small distances, implying
that the corresponding mediators must be
massi ve. However, the masses for
mediators spoil the symmetry of the theory.
Thus, we are faced with two conflicting
constraints on the theory: we want it to be
symmetric but we also want the force
carriers to be massive. This impasse could
be cleared if we assume that the symmetry
is implicit as in the case of the bar magnet.
That i s, the equati ons of the weak
i nteracti ons are symmetri c. When the
universe was very hot, this symmetry was
explicit and all the particles were massless.
The expansi on of the uni verse i s
accompanied by cooling and in the very
early phase of this cooling, the symmetry
was lost.
This is similar to the case of the bar
magnet, in which all the tiny magnets inside
become aligned at lower temperature.
When the symmetry of the weak interaction
i s l ost, the medi ators of the weak
interaction became massive. The loss of
symmetr y i nvari abl y l eaves behi nd a
signature: a fundamental particle with a
non-zero mass and spin zero. This is the
famous Higgs boson, named after Peter
Higgs, who predicted its existence about
fifty years back. The consistency of the
theor y indicates that all matter particles
al so acqui re thei r mass through thei r
interactions with the Higgs boson.
Duri ng l ast decades of the 20th
century, the predictions from the standard
model coul d be tested wi th great
precision, generating the confidence that
the formal i sm adopted earl i er was
correct. Thus the i dea of the parti cl es
acquiring mass due to symmetry breaking
had to be correct though i t needed
experimental confirmation. However, there
was no sight of the Higgs boson that made
scientists ver y uneasy about the whole
thing.
Interestingly, the theor y can predict
result of an experiment if we provide the
masses of the particles. The Higgs particle
was inferred to have a mass from very small
values upto 1000 GeV. Particle physicists
have been toiling to pin down the Higgs
particle since the last thirty years without
losing hope, since the theor y is beautiful
and successful from the point of view of
other aspects.
The previous accelerator at CERN, the
Lar ge El ectr on Posi tr on (LEP) col l i der,
searched for the Higgs boson but could
not find it and established that the Higgs
boson should be more massive than about
115 GeV. Comparison of all experimental
data wi th standard model l ed to the
prediction that the Higgs boson should be
l i ghter than about 700 GeV. The LHC
accelerator is planned to produce the
Higgs boson, whatever be its mass in the
above range. The production rate is sparse
and stochasti c, needi ng a ver y l arge
number of collisions to take place before
a handful are produced.
The Higgs boson, like any other ver y
massi ve parti cl e, decays al most
instantaneously into lighter particles. The
experiments at LHC are carefully designed
to detect the Hi ggs boson through
different decay modes. Unfortunately, the
Higgs boson cannot be detected in the
most dominant decay modes, to a pair of
quarks, when the mass is less than about
140 GeV. The strong interaction of the
constituents of the colliding protons, in
general, produce much the same final
state. Thus identification of the Higgs boson
is achieved via rare decay modes. The
sifting of collision data is thus highly crucial
as well as recognition of the pattern for
the production and subsequent decay of
the Higgs boson. The physics mandate of
LHC, has driven the machine parameters
as well as the features of the experiments
The meti cul ous preparati on and
construction of the accelerator and the
experiments took over twenty years. The
operation of the LHC machine started in
2008, which unfortunately was cut short
following a small accident. Diligent work
by accelerator engineers ensured that the
machine was operational within a year,
though at half the design energy. Since
then the LHC accelerator has performed
beyond expectations and has delivered
huge amount of data corresponding to
proton-on-proton collisions at centre of
mass energy of 7 TeV (during 2010- 2011)
and 8 TeV (during 2012).
Both ATLAS and CMS
collaborations, each consisting
of about four thousand
scientists as of today, invested
wisely to make excellent
detectors using cutting edge
technology.
The success of LHC underlines
the power of a cohesive work by
a dedicated community over a
long time with a vision of a grand
goal.
Feature Article
SCIENCE REPORTER, NOVEMBER 2012
22
Situated hundred metres below the
surface, opposi tel y movi ng beams
consisting of about 1400 bunches are
made to collide at few specific points with
ver y high flux. Each bunch, measuring
about 5 centimeters in length, 20 microns
across and 50 nanosecond apart from the
neighbouring ones, contains about 300
tri l l i on protons. Mammoth detectors,
positioned around the collision points, act
as sl euth detecti ves and record the
event: the aftermath of violent collisions
through digital image via eighty million
electronic channels.
Ver y careful selections are necessar y
to reduce the total proton-proton
interaction rate of about 100 million Hertz
to the permanent archi vi ng rate of
information of few hundred Hertz. The data
processi ng, anal ysi s, and storage are
achieved via distributed computing, LHC
Grid. The backbone of the success of LHC
physi cs programme has been the
immaculate computing which involves, for
example, petabytes (a million gigabytes)
of data moving across the globe within a
short time scale and several thousand
scientists analysing the data simultaneously
from different parts of the world.
The measurement of events i n the
detector, when the Higgs boson decays
to two photons or four charged leptons
(e.g., el ectron or muon) i s the most
accurate. It is to be noted that there are
many other processes occurring in the
collisions at LHC, which can produce two
photons or four charged l eptons and
hence mimic a Higgs boson signal. All
these possi bi l i ti es were studi ed wel l i n
advance, using lots of simulated events.
Hi gh-resol uti on measurements and
advanced analysis methods developed
for the di scover y coul d establ i sh the
production of the Higgs boson and its
subsequent decays.
A computer reconstructed candidate
event for the two-photon decay mode of
Higgs boson in CMS experiment is shown in
the illustration on page 19. The large green
legos signify energetic photons while the
yellow streaks correspond to low energy
charged parti cl es produced i n the
collision along with the Higgs boson. At the
final stage of analysis an excess of actually
observed events over expected
backgrounds i s the i ndi cati on of the
production and subsequent decay of the
Higgs boson in a particular final state.
The illustration on page 20 shows the
resonance structure observed i n CMS
experiment at 125 GeV which can be
explained again only in the presence of
the Hi ggs boson. The bl ue and green
contributions in the histogram correspond
to the background, whi ch are wel l
reproduced in simulation indicating that
the theoretical understanding is sound.
Though the discovery was achieved mainly
via these channels, other final states were
also measured and considered in the final
statistical interpretation. The high statistical
significance of five standard deviations for
the discover y implies that the probability
of fluctuations in background events to
i mi tate the events of the Hi ggs boson
decay signal is one in several hundred
millions.
The amount of data used to announce
the discovery was limited. Since then, the
data accumulated has doubled and is
likely to increase by threefold when LHC
machine stops providing proton-proton
col l i si ons by end of 2012. Thi s data i s
extremely crucial to understand in detail
property of the Higgs boson. This data may
also bring in additional exciting results, so
stay tuned! LHC machine, with a shutdown
of about eighteen months will restart in end
of 2014 to provide collisions at higher
energy with greater flux. That is needed to
l earn the physi cs beyond the one
descri bed by standard model . The
discover y of other new massive particles
are not ruled out.
Both ATLAS and CMS collaborations,
each consisting of about four thousand
scientists as of today, invested wisely to
make excellent detectors using cutting
edge technol ogy. Each detector has
several maj or subsystems meant for a
parti cul ar type of j ob. Indi a has been
col l aborati ng i n CMS experi ment and
contri buti ng i n al l aspects: detector
fabri cati on, si mul ati on studi es, data
collection, monitor, analyses, computing
and so on. With LHC programme chalked
out for next twenty years, the future of Indian
participation in CMS experiment is ver y
promising. Come and join us!
The success of LHC underl i nes the
power of a cohesive work by a dedicated
community over a long time with a vision
of a grand goal . Thus, LHC i s al so a
sociological experiment. Most importantly
i t i s defi ni ng the way to l ook at basi c
research that dri ves the evol uti on i n
technology.
Dr. Kajari Mazumdar is the Coordinator of India-
CMS collaboration. She has been working in the
CMS experiment at LHC for more than fifteen
years. She received her Ph.D. in Physics at
University of Mumbai in 1992, in which she
worked at L3 experiment at Large Electron
Positron accelerator at CERN. Dr. Mazumdar
has been at the Tata Insitute of Fundamental
Research (TIFR), Mumbai since 1986, first as a
Ph.D. student and since 1992 as a faculty
member (currently Professor). Address: TIFR,
Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400005.
Eternal question of mankind: What principles govern the energy, matter, space and time at the most elementary
level? High Energy Physics tries to answer these , and shares synergy with other fields to push back frontiers of
knowledge!
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