Physicists detected a Higgs boson decaying into a Z boson particle and a photon in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
What is the Higgs boson?
The Higgs boson is the fundamental force-carrying particle of the Higgs field, which is responsible for granting other particles their mass.
Known as ‘God’s Particle’, it was first discovered by the ATLAS and CMS detectors in 2012.
Properties - The Higgs boson has mass but is chargeless.
It has a mass of 125 billion electron volts.
It has zero spin, making it the only elementary particle with no spin.
How mass of other particles is related to Higgs Boson?
The mass of the subatomic particle depends on the particle’s interaction with the Higgs boson.
The stronger the interaction the more the mass it has.
Mass - Photons (particles of light) have no mass because they don’t interact with Higgs bosons.
The Higgs boson has a mass of 125 billion electron volts which is 130 times more massive than a proton.
A Higgs boson’s mass is greater than that of protons or neutrons because a Higgs boson can interact with another Higgs boson.
How universe could be studied using Higgs boson particles?
Universe - Higgs bosons can tell us a lot about the universe on studying two factors -
Understanding the properties of Higgs bosons
How strongly each type of atomic particle couples to Higgs bosons.
Virtual particles - According to quantum field theory, space at the subatomic level is filled with virtual particles.
They are particles that quickly pop in and out of existence which can’t be detected directly but their effects sometimes linger.
What is the Higgs Boson decay?
The LHC creates a Higgs boson by accelerating billions of highly energetic protons into a head-on collision.
This releases a tremendous amount of energy that condenses into different particles.
When a Higgs boson is created in LLHC, it has a brief interaction with virtual particles that creates a Z boson and a photon.
The Z boson is also unstable and decays to two muons some 3% of the time.
What is the Standard Model?
The Standard Model of particle physics explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, governed by 4 fundamental forces.
The Standard Model is an established and well-tested theory of particle physics.
It successfully explained how these particles and 3 of the forces are related to each other.
Weak force, Strong force, Gravitational force and Electromagnetic force are the 4 Fundamental forces.
But it could not explain dark energy or the warping of space and time or hoe neutrinos have mass.
The Standard Model theory states that a Higgs boson will decay to a Z boson and a photon 0.1% of the time if its mass is 125 billion eV/c2.
How significant is the decay?
According to the Standard Model, the LHC needed to have created at least 1,000 Higgs bosons to have been able to spot one of them decaying to a Z boson and a photon.
The LHC would have had to create at least 30,000 Higgs bosons to observe the decay just once to spot a pair of muons plus a photon created at the same time.
Testing Standard models predictions as precisely as possible is a way to find whether there are any cracks in the Model.
Some theories predict a higher rate of decay through this pathway.
The experimental proof of this can validate new theories of physics and open new realm of science.
Quick Facts
Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
Started in 2008, it is located in the CERN’s accelerator complex.
It consists of a 27-kilometre ring in which two high-energy particle beams travelling in opposite directions are made to collide.
It has 4 particle detectors - ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb at 4 colliding locations around the accelerator ring.
