Measurements of differential cross sections of the Higgs boson in the di-tau final state with the ATLAS detector at 13.6 TeV

A PhD student at CERN is sifting through billions of proton collisions to catch Higgs bosons decaying into pairs of tau leptons—heavy cousins of the electron—at unusually high energies. This matters because the Higgs boson is the particle that gives other particles their mass, and its behaviour at high momentum (above 200 GeV) is a promising place to look for cracks in the Standard Model, the current best theory of fundamental particles and forces. Any deviation from predicted rates could signal new physics—undiscovered particles or forces that would rewrite the textbooks. Jyotiska Panda’s work is fundamental science. It will not directly change a phone or a power grid. But precision measurements of the Higgs boson test the very fabric of how matter works. Similar fundamental particle physics research in the past gave us the World Wide Web, medical imaging (PET scanners), and superconducting magnets used in MRI machines. A deeper understanding of the Higgs could, over decades, open doors to new technologies—perhaps in energy, computation, or materials—that no one can yet predict. For now, the immediate impact is a sharper picture of nature’s most mysterious particle.