Quantum Diaries 2022 - Latest Posts
Latest Posts
29 June 2022
Finding our Place in Discovery
Tova Holmes, Assistant Professor, University of Tennessee
Maximilian Swiatlowski, Associate Research Scientist, TRIUMF
It was midnight, newly the fourth of July, and the three of us were in a CERN hostel room, strategizing. We were on to plan B: originally we’d intended to tote our hostel pillows to the auditorium, get a good night’s sleep on the floor between two rows of seats, and wake up with an unbeatable location to witness the announcement. But of course we’d been foiled. Earlier that day, we’d found the CERN auditorium locked and barricaded. Clearly we weren’t the only ones who’d thought of this.
28 June 2022
The Higgs discovery: an important moment of my life
Marco Valente, Postdoctoral research fellow, TRIUMF
The Higgs boson discovery has been an extremely important moment of my life as it has probably been the first moment I thought that I could become a particle physicist.
Anadi Canepa: Looking for signs of Higgs pair production
Anadi Canepa: Why the Higgs discovery has been so special for me
24 June 2022
Great science to come
Ken Bloom, Professor, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
On July 4, 2032, we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the announcement of the observation of the Higgs boson. By that time, we expect to have completed both Run 3, which will double our data sample, and also Run 4, the first run of the High-Luminosity LHC, which will double the sample yet again. We’ll know if any of the things I suggested above have come to pass. I hope we’ll be writing about it for Quantum Diaries once again!
Anadi Canepa: How Fermilab contributes to the LHC
Happy birthday! Ten years of Higgs Bosons – past, present, and future!
20 June 2022
Higgs Discovery
Robin Hayes
The Higgs boson discovery launched us into a new era of physics. Having found every particle predicted by the Standard Model, we’re now forced to take more creative routes toward the discovery of new physics. Above all, I find it encouraging to remember that the Standard Model is definitely not the final answer. There has to be new physics hiding out there somewhere. In a way, this post-Higgs-discovery era has all the excitement that characterized the years leading up to 2012: something new will be found, at some point, and at that point we’ll surely learn something fundamental about our universe.
17 June 2022
The Higgs Discovery Adventure
Narei Lorenzo Martinez
I started my phD in 2010, and I arrived at the LAL laboratory (France) the exact same week ATLAS was taking its first data after the LHC incident of 2008 that delayed the data-taking. The ambiance in the laboratory was already very special, everybody was so excited to see the first data arriving, and I remember having « seen » the first Z bosons in my life on a histogram I made with the first data.
16 June 2022
My dream
Ana Ventura Barros, PhD student at DESY
In 2012 I was in my last year of high school trying to figure out what I wanted to be. I wanted to study medicine since I was 6 and that’s the reason I chose my subjects focus on natural science, I had biology, chemistry maths and physics. It was the first time I was in contact with physics and thanks to my teacher at that time I fall in love with it.
6 June 2022
A roller-coaster ride
Daniel Jeans, Particle Physicist, Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies at KEK
After the Higgs boson discovery at LHC, and long after I had left the collaboration, CDF published “evidence” for Higgs production; the analysis made some use of the b-tagging tools I had earlier developed, so I made some contribution to confirmation of the Higgs discovery, although it’s rather small and tenuous!
2 June 2022
A date with physics history
Ken Bloom, Professor, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
While those first days of the Higgs boson were exciting, they were only the beginning. What was announced on July 4, 2012 was a bona fide discovery, but at that point we didn’t quite know what we had discovered, and we knew that there was going to be much work ahead to characterize the new particle.
1 June 2022
Higgsdependence Day
Jahred Adelman, Associate Professor, Northern Illinois University
When I tried to explain my overwhelming excitement at ending 40 years of searches for the last big, missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, she told me only: “That sounds important.”