Physicists are building and programming the electronic systems that will run the ATLAS detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, preparing to sift through particle collisions for signs of the Higgs boson and supersymmetric particles. This work addresses a fundamental gap in our understanding of the universe. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts the Higgs boson but has not yet observed it, and it offers no explanation for why matter dominates over antimatter. The researchers are also analysing data from the Stanford Linear Accelerator to measure subtle differences between particles and antiparticles that could account for that imbalance. The project is pure fundamental science. It will not directly improve a mobile phone or a power grid. But the same kind of curiosity-driven research that built the Large Hadron Collider gave us the World Wide Web, medical imaging techniques, and the superconducting magnets used in MRI scanners. If the Higgs boson is found, it will confirm a cornerstone of modern physics. If supersymmetric particles appear, they could point toward a deeper theory of nature. Either outcome would reshape how we understand the fabric of reality.
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Experimental particle physics addresses some of the fundamental questions about the structure and behaviour of the Universe at the level of the smallest particles of matter, the quarks and the leptons, and the forces acting between them. In this project we are contributing to the preparation of the ATLAS project at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN that will begin taking data in 2007. We are constructing and commissioning electronic systems and the software that drives them. From late 2007 we will be analysing the data as it becomes available. In particular we will be searhing the data for evidence of the existance of the Higgs boson, one of the key missing elements of the Standard Model of particle physics at present, and for supersymmetric particles, that are expected to exist. We are also planning to understand better the structure of the proton. In parallel we are are continuing our studies of data taken at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California to measure the subtle difference in behaviour between particles and antiparticles that may be responsible for the existence of matter but no antimatter in the Universe. We are contributing to a major research and development programme for the construction of a linear collider - an accelerator that will collide electrons and positrons at very high energy. This machine, proposed by a worldwide collaboration, will be the highest energy electron-positron collider ever built. We are also carrying out a research and development programme on a detector to be used at this accelerator.
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