The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
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Personal reminiscences
P. W. Higgs, “Prehistory of the Higgs boson,” Comptes Rendus Physique 8, 970 (2007).
P. W. Higgs, “My Life as a Boson,” http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nms/depts/physics/news/events/MyLifeasaBoson.pdf (2010).
G. S. Guralnik, “The History of the Guralnik, Hagen, and Kibble Development of the Theory of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Gauge Particles,” International Journal of Modern Physics A24, 2601, arXiv:0907.3466 (2009).
T. W. B. Kibble, The Englert-Brout-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble Mechanism (history),” Scholarpedia, http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Englert-Brout-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble_mechanism_(history)
R. Brout and F. Englert, “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Gauge Theories: a Historical Survey,” arXiv:hep-th/9802142 (1998).
Technical articles
V. L. Ginzburg and L. D. Landau, “On the theory of superconductivity,” Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (USSR) 20, 1064 (1950).
P. W. Anderson, “An Approximate Quantum Theory of the Antiferromagnetic Ground State,” Physical Review 86, 694 (1952).
C. N. Yang and R. L. Mills, “Conservation of Isotopic Spin and Isotopic Gauge Invariance,” Physical Review 96, 191 (1954).
L. N. Cooper, “Bound Electron Pairs in a Degenerate Fermi Gas,” Physical Review 104, 1189 (1956).
J. Bardeen, L. N. Cooper, and J. R. Schrieffer, “Microscopic Theory of Superconductivity,” Physical Review 106, 162 (1957).
J. Bardeen, L. N. Cooper, and J. R. Schrieffer, “Theory of Superconductivity,” Physical Review 108, 1175 (1957).
J. Schwinger, “A Theory of the Fundamental Interactions,” Annals of Physics 2, 407 (1957).
N. N. Bogoliubov, “A New Method in the Theory of Superconductivity,” Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (USSR) 34, 58 [Soviet Physics-JETP 7, 41] (1958).
P. W. Anderson, “Coherent Excited States in the Theory of Superconductivity: Gauge Invariance and the Meissner Effect,” Physical Review 110, 827 (1958).
P. W. Anderson, “Random-Phase Approximation in the Theory of Superconductivity,” Physical Review 112, 1900 (1958).
Y. Nambu, “Quasiparticles and Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superconductivity,” Physical Review 117, 648 (1960).
Y. Nambu and G. Jona-Lasinio, “Dynamical Model of Elementary Particles Based on an Analogy with Superconductivity, I,” Physical Review 124, 246 (1961).
Y. Nambu and G. Jona-Lasinio, “Dynamical Model of Elementary Particles Based on an Analogy with Superconductivity, II,” Physical Review 122, 345 (1961).
S. L. Glashow, “Partial Symmetries of the Weak Interactions,” Nuclear Physics 22, 579 (1961).
J. Goldstone, “Field Theories with Superconductor Solutions,” Nuovo Cimento 19, 154 (1961).
J. Goldstone, A. Salam, and S. Weinberg, “Broken Symmetries,” Physical Review 127, 965 (1962).
J. Schwinger, “Gauge Invariance and Mass,” Physical Review 125, 397 (1962).
P. W. Anderson, “Plasmons, Gauge Invariance, and Mass,” Physical Review 130, 439 (1963).
A. Klein and B. Lee, “Does Spontaneous Breakdown of Symmetry Imply Zero-Mass Particles?” Physical Review Letters 12, 266 (1964).
W. Gilbert, “Broken Symmetries and Massless Particles,” Physical Review Letters 12, 713 (1964).
F. Englert and R. Brout, “Broken Symmetry and the Mass of Gauge Vector Mesons,” Physical Review Letters 13, 321 (1964).
P. W. Higgs, “Broken Symmetries, Massless Particles, and Gauge Fields,” Physics Letters 12, 134 (1964).
P. W. Higgs, “Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons,” Physical Review Letters 13, 508 (1964).
A. Salam and J. C. Ward, “Electromagnetic and Weak Interactions,” Physics Letters 13, 168 (1964).
G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. B. Kibble, “Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles,” Physical Review Letters 13, 585 (1964).
P. W. Higgs, “Spontaneous Symmetry Breakdown Without Massless Bosons,” Physical Review 145, 1156 (1966).
A. Migdal and A. Polyakov, “Spontaneous Breakdown of Strong Interaction Symmetry and the Absence of Massless Particles,” Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (USSR) 51, 135 [Soviet Physics-JETP 24, 91] (1966).
T. W. B. Kibble, “Symmetry Breaking in Non-Abelian Gauge Theories,” Physical Review 155, 1554 (1967).
S. Weinberg, “A Model of Leptons,” Physical Review Letters 19, 1264 (1967).
A. Salam, “Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions,” Elementary Particle Theory: Proceedings of the Nobel Symposium held in 1968 at Lerum, Sweden, N. Svartholm, ed., p. 367. Almqvist and Wiksell (1968).
G. ’t Hooft, “Renormalizable Lagrangians for Massive Yang-Mills Fields,” Nuclear Physics B 44, 189 (1971).
G. ’t Hooft and M. Veltman, “Regularization and Renormalization of Gauge Fields,” Nuclear Physics B 44, 189 (1972).
Chapter Twelve: Beyond This Horizon
Rubin: Ken Croswell. The Universe at Midnight: Observations Illuminating the Cosmos. New York: Free Press (2001).
Patt and Wilczek: B. Patt and F. Wilczek, “Higgs-field Portal into Hidden Sectors,” http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0605188
dark-matter collisions with the human body: K. Freese and C. Savage, “Dark Matter Collisions with the Human Body,” http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1204.1339
“Higgs in Space”: C. B. Jackson, et al., “Higgs in Space,” Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 4, 4 (2010).
Shaposhnikov and Tkachev: M. Shaposhnikov and I.I. Tkachev, “Higgs Boson Mass and the Anthropic Principle,” Modern Physics Letters A 5, 1659 (1990).
106 GeV: B. Feldstein, L. Hall, and T. Watari, “Landscape Predictions for Higgs Boson and Top Quark Masses,” Physical Review D 74, 095011 (2006).
Weinberg: S. Weinberg, Physical Review Letters 59, 2607 (1987).
Chapter Thirteen: Making It Worth Defending
Wilson: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2011/09/23/protons-and-pistols-remembering-robert-wilson/
Weinberg: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/10/crisis-big-science/
National Journal: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/05/higgs-boson-find-could-make-light-speed-travel-possible-scientists-hope/
Mansfield 1: E. Mansfield, “Academic Research and Industrial Innovation,” Research Policy 20, 1 (1991).
Mansfield 2: E. Mansfield, “Academic Research and Industrial Innovation: An Update of Empirical Findings,” Research Policy 26, 773 (1998).
Cartoon: Z. Weiner, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2088
Yahia: http://blogs.nature.com/houseofwisdom/2012/07/the-social-aspect-of-the-higgs-boson.html
Evans: interview, July 4, 2012.
Appendices
For more on helicity, see F. Tanedo, “Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs,” http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/06/19/helicity-chirality-mass-and-the-higgs/
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I make my living as a physicist, but my specialty is theoretical gravitation and cosmology; in particle physics I am a semi-tourist, and I haven’t been involved directly in an experiment since I was an undergraduate. I owe an enormous debt to a large number of people who generously helped me during this project, both by sharing their insights and by reading drafts of the book.
A number of physicists who work on this stuff for a living were kind enough to be interviewed for this book, either by phone or by email. It’s a pleasure to thank Philip Anderson, John Conway, Gerald Guralnik, Fabiola Gianotti, JoAnne Hewett, Joe Incandela, Gordy Kane, David Kaplan, Mike Lamont, Joe Lykken, Jack Steinberger, Gordon Watts, Frank Wilczek, and Sau Lan Wu for enormously helpful conversations. Mistakes are all completely my fault, needless to say—and my apologies for using only a tiny fraction of the stories I was told.
I was also fortunate enough to get help from both professional physicists and amateur lovers of science who answered specific questions or off
ered comments on the text. Big thanks to Allyson Beatrice, Dan Birman, Matt Buckley, Alicia Chang, Lauren Gunderson, Kevin Hand, Ann Kottner, Rick Loverd, Rusi Mchedlishvili, Philip Phillips, Abbas Raza, Henry Reich, Ira Rothstein, Maria Spiropulu, David Saltzberg, Matt Strassler, and Zach Weinersmith for spending time reading the book and offering input. Their comments have improved the manuscript a millionfold. Special thanks to Zach for sharing the comic reprinted in the insert, which says it all.
Thanks to my students and collaborators, who once again showed great patience with me when I would disappear for lengthy stretches of time. (At least they seemed patient from where I was sitting.) And let me send my appreciation to all the readers of our blog, Cosmic Variance, and everyone who comes to hear me talk about these topics in public lectures. I am constantly amazed and delighted at the genuine enthusiasm for science and learning that I encounter on a regular basis.
Without my editor, Stephen Morrow, and the good folks at Dutton, this book would have likely never been instigated, and if it had it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Without my agents, Katinka Matson and John Brockman, I probably wouldn’t be writing books in the first place.
In the dedication to their famous textbook Gravitation, Charles Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Wheeler express their thanks to their fellow citizens for supporting public expenditures on science. For giant projects like the Large Hadron Collider, more than a little bit of government spending is required, as well as an impressive amount of international collaboration. Sincere thanks to all the people of all the countries of the world who help enable the quest to discover nature’s deepest secrets. Reporting back on the wonders we have found is really the least we can do.
I fell in love with the talented writer Jennifer Ouellette because of her good looks, piercing intellect, and engaging personality, not because she is endlessly patient and extremely helpful when it comes to writing books. But it is a nice side benefit. My eternal love and appreciation.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
Note: page numbers in italics indicate charts and illustrations.
Accademia Belle Arti, 67–68
action at a distance, 116, 119–20
aesthetic value of basic research, 278
aether, 10, 139
ALEPH, 64, 65
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 207
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), 97–98
Alvarez, Luis, 56, 106
Alvarez, Walter, 56
American Physical Society (APS), 71–72, 240
Anderson, Carl, 44–45, 46, 48, 97
Anderson, Philip, 72, 215, 219–21, 223–26, 238–39, 256
angular momentum, 284–85, 285–87
anthropic principle, 266–67
antimatter, 43–46, 200–201, 268
antiparticles
antibottom quarks, 171, 171, 187
anticharm quarks, 171
antineutrinos, 133–34
antiprotons, 56, 62
antiquarks, 101–4, 102, 169
anti-tau leptons, 171
antitop quark, 170
and dark matter, 246
and Higgs decay modes, 171–74, 173
tau-antitau pairs, 171, 172, 173, 187
Arab-Israeli War, 106
Aristotle, 10, 119
arts, 278–79
atheism and agnosticism, 22
ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS)
announcement of Higgs discovery, 184–85, 186
authorship of scientific papers, 192–95
data sharing from, 112, 113
described, 97, 98–100
detector layers, 107–10
and Higgs decay modes, 187
memo leaks, 202–4
number of researchers at, 198, 203
and particle “pileup,” 102
search for the Higgs boson, 163–65, 170
and statistical analysis, 180
atoms and atomic structure, 10, 41–43, 42, 279–80
authorship of scientific papers, 192–95
Autiero, Dario, 195–96
axions, 169
Aymar, Robert, 77, 83
Babylonians, 10
Bardeen, John, 214
baryons, 96, 294
basic research, value of, 13–14, 26, 72, 122, 271–75, 278
BCS theory, 214–15, 216–19
Bernardi, Gregorio, 240
Berners-Lee, Tim, 113, 274
Berra, Yogi, 271
Bevatron, 55–56
Bhatia, Aatish, 33
Big Bang
and background radiation, 21
and dark matter, 247
and LHC experiments, 97–98
and nucleosynthesis, 247
and particle creation, 60
and “Primeval Atom” theory, 22
and symmetry, 160–61
Big Science, 211–12
binary star systems, 123
black holes, 15, 189–92, 211, 273
blind analysis, 179
Bloembergen, Nicolaas, 72
blogs, 198–200, 202–4
Boezio, Mike, 201
Bogolyubov, Nikolay, 215
Bohr, Niels, 41–42, 46, 209–10
Bohr model, 41–42
bosons
boson fields, 153
and connection fields, 162
described, 28–29
and Feynman diagrams, 167–68
massless, 143
and particle detector findings, 103–4
and particle spin, 285–86
and spontaneous symmetry-breaking, 217, 218
and string theory, 262
and superconductivity, 215
and supersymmetry, 257–58, 259
and the weak force, 30–31, 31–32
bottom quarks
charge of, 50, 294
decay of, 103
and Higgs decay modes, 170, 171, 171, 187
and the Higgs field, 137, 146
interaction with Higgs boson, 143
and LHC experiments, 97
and quark generations, 51
and symmetry of weak interactions, 158
Branagh, Kenneth, 205
branes, 264, 265–67
A Brief History of Time (Hawking), 21
Britton, David, 175
Brookhaven National Lab, 66, 67
Brout, Robert, 221–26, 228, 238, 239–41
Bugorski, Anatoli, 87
calculus, 222
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 45, 135, 278
calorimeters, 107–10
CDF experiment, 199
CERN, 3, 61–63, 66–69, 82, 162, 183, 274. See also Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Cessy, France, 82, 99
Chamberlain, Owen, 56
charge of particles
and connection fields, 153
and conservation laws, 133–34
and dark matter, 247–48
and electromagnetism, 29
fermions, 294, 294
and magnetic fields, 57
and particle accelerators, 56, 97
and particle spin, 286
charm quarks, 50, 51, 66, 146, 158, 171, 294
chemical elements, 10
chemistry, 145–46
Christianity, 21, 22
Cirelli, Marco, 201
Cittolin, Sergio, 90
Close, Frank, 234
cloud chambers, 44–45, 46, 97
CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid)
and announcement of Higgs discovery, 184, 186
authorship of scientific papers, 192–95
construction of, 82
and data sharing, 112
described, 97–100
and detector layers, 107–10
and Evans’s retirement, 91
and exp
losion at the LHC, 78
and Higgs decay modes, 187
and memo leaks, 202–3
number of researchers on, 198, 203
and particle “pileup,” 102
and publishing process, 192
and search for the Higgs boson, 163–65, 170
and statistical analysis, 180
Coleman, Sidney, 228, 236, 281
collaboration, scientific, 112–14, 164, 185, 192–95, 201, 277
Collider Blog, 203
Collins, Nick, 163
coma clusters of galaxies, 244
compactification of dimensions, 263–65, 264
Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) (proposed), 277
Compact Muon Solenoid. See CMS
Compton, Arthur, 127
condensed matter physics, 213–14, 219–20
Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 269
connection fields, 152, 152, 154, 211, 289
Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, 61. See also CERN
conservation laws, 133–34, 166
Conway, John, 199–200
Cooper, Leon, 214
Cooper pairs, 214–15, 217
Coppola, Francis Ford, 207
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), 21
cosmic rays
and antimatter, 44–45
and black hole panic, 191
and dark matter, 250
energy of, 56
and LHCf experiment, 98
and muons, 48, 106
and PAMELA experiment, 200–202
Cosmic Variance (blog), 181, 196, 198
cosmological constant, 221, 255
cosmology, 2
cryogenic particle detectors, 250–51
curiosity, value of, 13–14, 26, 278–79
The Daily Mail, 190
The Daily Show, 189–91
Dalton, John, 10
dark energy, 25, 221
See also vacuum energy