- 4121 - MUON AND HIGGS - BOSON PHYSICS. The discovery of wobbling muons promises to spark a revolution in physics. This tiny wobbling particle may be about to reveal a fifth force of nature. Physicists have found more evidence that the muon, a subatomic particle, is wobbling far more than it should, and they think it's because an unknown force is pushing it.
-------------- 4121 - MUON AND HIGGS - BOSON PHYSICS -
- If the finding wobbling muons is true, and
the theoretical controversies around these measurements can be overcome, they
represent a breakthrough in physics of a kind that hasn't been seen for 50
years, when the dominant theory to explain subatomic particles was solidified.
-
- The muon's minute wobbling, known as its magnetic
moment, has the potential to shake the very foundations of science. Occasionally referred to as "fat
electrons," muons are similar to electrons but are 200 times heavier and
radioactively unstable, decaying in mere millionths of a second into electrons
and tiny, ghostly, chargeless particles known as neutrinos.
-
- Muons also have a property called “spin”,
which makes them behave as if they were tiny magnets, causing them to wobble
like mini gyroscopes when inside a magnetic field.
-
- To investigate the muon's wobbling,
physicists at Fermilab sent the particles flying around a minus 450 degree Fahrenheit superconducting magnetic ring at nearly the
speed of light, a speed that, due to relativistic time dilation, extends the
muons' short lifetimes by a factor of about 3,000.
-
- By looking at how muons wobbled as they
made thousands of laps around the 50-foot-diameter ring, the physicists
compiled data suggesting that the muon was wobbling far more than it should be. The explanation is the existence of something
not yet accounted for by the Standard Model of Physics, the set of equations
that explain all subatomic particles, which has remained unchanged since the
mid-1970s.
-
- This “mysterious something” could be a
completely unknown force of nature (the known four are gravitational,
electromagnetic and the strong and weak nuclear forces). Alternatively, it
could be an unknown exotic particle, or evidence of a new dimension or an
undiscovered aspect of space-time.
-
- Physicists will use all of the data
collected during the g-2 experiment's 2018 to 2023 run: The current result only
takes data from 2019 and 2020. Secondly, they will need to wait for theoretical
predictions from the Standard Model to catch up.
-
- There are currently two theoretical methods
for calculating what the muon's wobble should be under the Standard Model.
These two methods produce conflicting predictions. Some of these calculations
give a much larger value to the theoretical uncertainty of the muon's magnetic
moment threatening to rob the experiment of its physics-breaking significance.
-
- Another experiment, using data from the
“CMD-3 accelerator” in Novosibirsk, Russia, also appears to find the muons
wobbling within normal bounds, but the experiment directly contradicts a
previous run of the accelerator that hinted at an opposite result.
-
- Fermilab researchers hope that the full
results, which they expect to be ready in 2025, could be precise enough to give
a clear reading. At the same time the
ATLAS experiment smashes records measuring the Higgs boson's mass
precisely revolutionizing our
understanding of particle interactions.
-
- For over a decade, the Higgs boson has
captured the imagination of scientists worldwide. Since its discovery at the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 11 years ago, this elusive particle has held the
key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe's fundamental structure.
-
- Standard Model of Physics is a theory that
explains the interactions between particles in our universe. But, the mass of the Higgs boson isn't
something that can be predicted. Instead, physicists rely on experimental
measurements to determine this crucial value.
The mass of the Higgs boson plays a critical role in determining how it
interacts with other particles and with itself.
-
- By accurately measuring its mass, scientists
can fine-tune theoretical calculations and compare them with the predictions
from the Standard Model. Any deviations from these predictions could hint at
entirely new and unexplored phenomena, shaking the foundations of our
understanding of the Universe.
-
- The Higgs boson's mass also profoundly
impacts the evolution and stability of the Universe's vacuum. “ATLAS” is a collaborative effort between
physicists and researchers worldwide. They've been on a mission to push the
boundaries of precision in Higgs boson measurements since the particle's
discovery.
-
- ATLAS' latest achievement involves
combining two crucial results to produce the most precise measurement of the
Higgs boson's mass ever recorded. The first measurement focused on the Higgs
boson's decay into two high-energy photons, affectionately known as the
"diphoton channel."
-
- The result? A staggering mass of 125.22
billion electronvolts (GeV) with an uncertainty of a mere 0.14 GeV. That's a
precision of 0.11%.
-
- This breakthrough wouldn't have been
possible without the full ATLAS data sets from Runs 1 and 2 of the LHC. With
the Run 2 data, the statistical uncertainty was slashed in half, paving the way
for unprecedented accuracy. The
calibration of photon energy measurements underwent dramatic improvements,
cutting the systematic uncertainty by nearly a factor of four, down to a mere
0.09 GeV.
-
- The researchers then combined this result
with an earlier mass measurement obtained from the "four-lepton
channel." The result? A Higgs boson mass of 125.11 GeV with an uncertainty
of only 0.11 GeV.
-
- This discovery represents another crucial
step in the increasingly detailed mapping of particle physics' critical new
sector.
-
-
August 17, 2023 MUON
AND HIGGS - BOSON PHYSICS 4121
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