All articles tagged with #large hadron collider
CERN has initiated the third long shutdown of the Large Hadron Collider by disconnecting its aging inner triplet magnets. These components, installed between 2005 and 2007, will be replaced by new niobium-tin superconducting magnets that generate fields 40% stronger. This upgrade aims to increase collision rates for the ATLAS and CMS experiments, significantly boosting data collection for fundamental physics research.
CERN’s CMS and ATLAS experiments have found no evidence of microscopic black holes in recent proton collisions, but they have significantly narrowed the energy range where such objects could exist. Using 138 inverse femtobarns of data from 2016-2018, CMS excluded semiclassical black holes below 9.0 to 11.4 TeV, while ATLAS’s 2022-2024 data excluded models up to 9.4 TeV. These null results, achieved through new machine learning techniques, constrain theories involving extra dimensions and help resolve the hierarchy problem by eliminating viable parameter spaces for quantum gravity.
Physicists using the CMS detector at the LHC have hunted for ultra‑small, short‑lived quantum black holes that could bridge quantum mechanics and general relativity. While such objects might arise from collisions at extreme energies and potentially reveal hidden dimensions, the CMS analysis up to about 12 TeV found no evidence, setting exclusion limits and refining where new physics could hide. The null result advances the search for a quantum gravity framework and a theory of everything, with higher energies and more data expected to continue the hunt carefully rather than posing any danger to Earth.
Physicists with CERN's ATLAS collaboration found strong evidence that Z bosons produced in Higgs decays remain quantum-entangled, rejecting a nonentangled alternative at 4.7 sigma (just shy of the 5-sigma discovery threshold). By analyzing the Z bosons’ spin states via four-lepton decays and angular distributions, the result supports Standard Model predictions and demonstrates entanglement at the electroweak scale with massive, short-lived particles. This extends collider tests of quantum information to new regimes and could sharpen future precision tests as more Run 3 and High-Luminosity LHC data become available.
Physicists at CERN used the Large Hadron Collider to collide oxygen nuclei with protons, recreating the birth of cosmic ray air showers in the lab. Analyzing the resulting particle sprays with the ATLAS detector, they achieved tenfold-precision measurements that challenge existing models and help determine the hydrogen versus heavier-element makeup of cosmic rays, shedding light on their origins; results are published in Physical Review Letters.
Researchers propose that macroscopic dark matter candidates called axion quark nuggets could pass through Earth and generate a faint acoustic disturbance that dislodges dust in the LHC, causing beam-loss events detectable by the collider’s existing monitors. They urge reanalyzing past unidentified falling object (UFO) events for a fingerprint of three or more correlated disturbances in the 27-km tunnel, suggesting a new way to search for dark matter without hardware changes. Publication is planned in Physical Review D.
India’s six-decade partnership with CERN puts it at the center of the LHC upgrade and the global hunt for dark matter, with Indian labs contributing to magnet systems, cryogenics, detectors and high-performance computing that underpinned the Higgs boson discovery and will push physics beyond the Standard Model as CERN restarts after a $1.5B upgrade in 2030.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has entered a four-year Long Shutdown 3 to upgrade into the High-Luminosity LHC, which will raise collision rates by about tenfold and enable roughly 380 million Higgs bosons over its lifetime. The upgrade, which involves replacing thousands of magnets and other components, aims to deliver a much larger data set to probe the Higgs, dark matter, and the early universe. Operations are slated to resume in 2030 and continue into the 2040s, after which a new, higher-energy accelerator may replace it.
ATLAS physicists at CERN observed the excited Bc*+ meson, a heavy-quark bound state (charm quark with a bottom antiquark), produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions at the LHC. The Bc*+ rapidly decays to a Bc+ meson and a photon, which was identified indirectly when the photon converted into an electron–positron pair in the detector. The measured mass difference between Bc*+ and Bc+ is 64.5 ± 1.4 MeV, consistent with theoretical expectations and providing new data to refine models of heavy-quark dynamics and the strong force. Publication is set for Physical Review Letters.
Scientists at CERN used a rare Z-boson–tagged event to observe how a single quark traverses quark-gluon plasma, revealing fluid-like wake patterns that align with hydrodynamic predictions and confirming the primordial plasma behaved as a dense, flowing liquid in the universe’s first microseconds.
MIT and CERN recreated early-universe conditions by colliding lead ions at near-light speed in the LHC, tracing how quarks slow and generate a wake in quark-gluon plasma, providing definitive evidence that this primordial soup behaves like a liquid rather than a gas, with implications for understanding the birth of matter.
Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (CMS collaboration) detected a subtle dip (less than 1%) in backward particle production as a high-energy quark moved through a tiny droplet of quark-gluon plasma, revealing a wake formed by energy transfer to the primordial fluid. By using Z bosons as clean markers, researchers could isolate this effect and gain a lab-side glimpse into the hot, liquid-like plasma that filled the early universe microseconds after the Big Bang.
Physicists analyzing LHC data from CERN used Z bosons as markers to track quarks moving through quark-gluon plasma, confirming that this primordial soup behaves like a liquid and creates wake patterns as it’s disturbed, a finding that supports long-standing theories about the early universe and provides new ways to study the properties of this exotic fluid.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland will be shut down starting June for about five years to undergo major upgrades to increase its collision capacity, with the goal of enabling more advanced experiments. During this period, CERN is also planning the development of the Future Circular Collider, a much larger and more powerful accelerator, although its future is uncertain due to high costs and scientific debates. The LHC's shutdown is part of ongoing efforts to deepen our understanding of fundamental physics, including the universe's origins.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is being shut down temporarily for upgrades to increase its collision capacity, with a long-term plan to replace it with the even larger Future Circular Collider, aiming to continue groundbreaking discoveries in fundamental physics despite high costs and scientific debates.