W and Z bosons the intermediate vector (spin-1) bosons of electroweak theory; the W boson is electrically charged (W+, W−) and was discovered together with the electrically neutral Z boson at CERN in 1983; both the W and Z bosons are very short-lived, with a half-life of about 3 × 10−25 seconds
Ward identity a mathematical identity in quantum field theory that follows from gauge invariance and is valid after renormalization of the theory; also known as the Ward–Takahachi identity, developed by John Ward and Yasushi Takahashi to guarantee the cancelation of ultraviolet divergences in all orders of perturbation theory
weak interaction or weak force one of the four fundamental forces of nature, it is responsible for the radioactive decay of nuclei and nuclear fusion; the weak and electromagnetic interactions have been united in the electroweak theory of the standard model
FURTHER READING
Aczel, Amir D. Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.
Baggott, Jim. The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Baggott, Jim. Higgs: The Invention & Discovery of the “God Particle.” Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Carroll, Sean. The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World. New York: Dutton (Penguin Group), 2012.
Close, Frank. Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Close, Frank. The New Cosmic Onion: Quarks and the Nature of the Universe. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2007.
Close, Frank. The Infinity Puzzle: How the Hunt to Understand the Universe Led to Extraordinary Science, High Politics, and the Large Hadron Collider. New York: Basic Books, 2011.
Coughlan, Guy D., James E. Dodd, and Ben M. Gripaios. The Ideas of Particle Physics: An Introduction for Scientists, 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Cox, Brian, and Jeff Forshaw. The Quantum Universe (and Why Anything That Can Happen, Does). Boston, MA: Da Capo Press (Perseus Books Group), 2011.
Crease, Robert P., and Charles C. Mann. The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics, rev. ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996 (originally published 1986).
Fayer, Michael D. Absolutely Small: How Quantum Theory Explains Our Everyday World. New York: AMACOM, 2010.
Fritzsch, Harald. Elementary Particles: Building Blocks of Matter. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2005.
Johnson, George. Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Krauss, Lawrence M. Quantum Man: Richard Feynman’s Life in Science. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012.
Kumar, Manjit. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.
Lederman, Leon, with Dick Teresi. The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Lincoln, Don. The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Pickering, Andrew. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Randall, Lisa. Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty Space. New York: HarperCollins, 2013.
Sample, Ian. Massive: The Hunt for the God Particle. Virgin Digital, 2010.
Schumm, Bruce A. Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Veltman, Martinus. Facts and Mysteries in Elementary Particle Physics. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2003.
Weinberg, Steven. Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
Wouk, Herman. A Hole in Texas. New York: Little, Brown, 2004.
INDEX
ABEHHGK mechanism, 90
Abel, Niels Henrik, 56, 58
Abelian, 56
abelian groups, 57, 58, 59, 203
abelian Higgs mechanism, 142
acceleration, of the expansion of the universe, 73
accelerators, 42, 203
designing and building, 48
invention of, 32
kinds of, 43
number of newly discovered particles at, 2
running with pulses that go on and off, 48
accelerator tunnel, for LHC, 49
ace [quark] model, 1, 6–7
action, 203
“action at a distance,” 133
Adams, John, 48
Adams, Todd, 111–112
Adone electron-positron collider, in Italy, 30
aether. See ether
Albrecht, Andreas, 131, 188
ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector, 50, 51
alpha particles, scattered off gold leaf, 7–8
Altarelli, Guido, xiii–xiv, 78
Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, 45
alternative electroweak theory, xii, xiv, xv, 139
alternative theories, as foils to standard model, 130–132
analyticity, of the S-matrix, 25–26
Anderson, Carl, 2, 42, 93, 161, 203
Anderson, Philip, xi, 85–86, 89
anode, 33, 203. See also cathode
anomalous precession, of Mercury, 15
anthropic principle, 181, 183, 184, 203
antimatter, 2, 203
antiparticle, of the electron, 210 See also positron
antiproton, 2
antiscreening or antishielding effect, 30
Argonne National Laboratory, 45
Aristotle, 1
Associated Press, on existence of the God particle, 154
associative rule, 57
asymptotic freedom, discovery of, 29
ATLAS (a toroidal LHC apparatus) detector, 50, 52, 203
calorimeter at, 40
detected a 5-sigma signal, 162
electromagnetic calorimeter detectors, 102
ATLAS group: alerted to CMS results, 155
determination of the spin and parity of the observed Higgs-like particle by, 197
showed a combined plot for all decay channels, 153
ATLAS results: differing significantly from the CMS results, 192
for two-photon decay of the new boson, 103, 191
ATLAS summary, of the combined 2011/2012 data, 196
atom: as basic unit, 1
existence of, 32
atomic nucleus, splitting, 43
axion particle, 77
background, calculation of, 194
background, 39, 42, 44, 48, 69, 77
Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer (BCS) theory, 204
Bardeen, John, 87
Bardeen, William, 185
bare mass, 72, 82, 145, 177, 203
Barger, Amy, 132
barns (b), 108, 206
Barrow, John, 181
baryon number, 7
baryons, 3, 203, 206
assigned to octets of SU(3), 27
quark color combinations of, 13
decuplet of, 3
basic constituents of all matter, 6
basic unit, breaking matter down to, 1
b-bar-b decay channel, 103, 117 See also bottom-antibottom quarks
Becchi, Carlo Maria, 84
Becquerel, Henri, 2, 16
beta decay, 17, 203
Bethe, Hans, 17
beyond-the-standard-model (BSM), 121, 122, 123
Big Bang, 130, 188, 203, 204
Big Crunch, 188
billions of electron volts (GeV), xi, 206
bins, containing data events, 99–100
Bjorken, James, 8, 11
black body, 32, 203
black-body radiation, formula for, 119
blind analysis, 169
blog sites, 160, 172
Bohm-Aharanov phase prescription, 62
Bohr, Niels, 33
, 34, 63
Bondi, Herman, 181
boosted decision tree algorithm (BDT), 199
bootstrapping mechanism, 26
Born, Max, 58
bosons, 203
calculating masses in supersymmetry, 180
mixing of, 165
spin and the parity of, 117
spin of, 4
bottom (or beauty) quark, 14
bottom and antibottom quarks, decaying into, 102, 148
bottom-antibottom (b-bar-b) quarks, 152
bottom-antibottom decay channel, of the X boson, 175
bottomonium, 119, 127, 165
Brahe, Tycho, 200
branching ratio, 102, 116, 158
brane extension, of superstring theory, 168
Breit, Gregory, 4
Bremsstrahlung effect, 35
Brink, Lars, 98, 108
broken symmetries, 56, 66
Brookhaven National Laboratory, 45, 48
Brout, Robert, xi, 86, 89, 90
Brout-Englert-Higgs-Hagen-Guralnik-Kibble (BEHHGK) mechanism, 90
Brownstein, Joel, 132
BRST gauge summetry, 84
BSM. See beyond-the-standard-model (BSM)
bubble chambers, 35, 36, 37, 204
Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path, 3
building blocks: finding, 1–2
grouping, 2–6
bumps: as artifacts or statistical fluctuations, 109
interpreting, 115–121
particles identified by, 4
positions of in the CMS and ATLAS data, 104
in the possible decay of the Higgs into two photons, 103
in the search for the Higgs boson, 99–101
B-vector meson, 65, 66
Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrices, 165
Cabibbo-Maksymowicz angles, 197
calorimeter, 38–39
Canelli, Florencia, 112
Carter, Brandon, 181
cathode, 204. See also anode
cathode ray tube, accelerating electrons, 41
causality, at microscopic level of particle phyics, 132, 133, 134
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), ix
bubble chambers, 35, 36
discovery of a new boson, 109
experimentalists, 149, 170
ILC (International Linear Collider) planned for, 44, 144
isolating data storage facilites, 170
large electron-positron collider (LEP), 46
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at, 49–54
needing to guarantee funding of the machine, 108
particle discovered at CERN as Higgs boson, 189
Proton Synchrotron (PS) at, 45, 46, 48
super proton synchrotron (SPS) at, 14, 48
upgrading the LHC, 52
Worldwide Web invented at, 78
CERN Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus (OPERA) group, 155
Chadwick, James, 2
Chalmers, Matthew, 155
charge conjugation, 14, 112
charged intermediate vector boson W, 142
mass of, 24
charge-parity (CP) violation, tests to observe, 111
charge quantum number, of a quark, 111
charm-anticharm (c-bar-c) quarks, 152
charmonium resonances, 119
charm quark, 11
Charpak, Georges, 37
Cherenkov, Pavel, 34
Cherenkov radiation, 34
Chew, Geoffrey, 25
circular accelerator, 43, 45
Clayton, Michael, 139
Cline, David, 104, 106, 107
cloud chamber, 35, 204
CMS (compact muon solenoid) detector, x, 39, 50, 102, 162, 203
analysts, 191
diphoton results, 104
measured mass of new particle, 158
results, 109, 190, 194
Cockcroft, John, 43
Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, 43
cold dark matter, 77
Coleman, Sydney, 90, 185
collider, 43, 45, 204
Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), 14
color, quark characteristic, 30, 124
color charge, 10, 30, 204
colored gluons, 29, 31, 66, 83, 93, 94
colored quarks, 11, 30
color-neutral hadrons, 10
communications, of entangled particles, 133
complementarity principle, Bohr’s, 63
complex plane, two-dimensional group in, 59
complex variable theory, 137
composite Higgs alternative models, 126–128
Compton, Arthur, 34
concordance cosmological model, 76
confinement, quarks, 10, 11, 204
conformal invariance, 185
conservation law, in a theory, 62
constrained minimal supersymmetric model, 110
continuous groups, special cases of, 58
continuous symmetry invariance, of equations, 62
Cooper, Leon, 87
Cooper pairs, 87, 123, 204
Copernican principle, 181
Cornwall, John, 138
cosmic microwave background (CMB), 204
cosmic rays, 42, 204
cosmic void, 131, 204
cosmological bearings, on particle physics, 186–188
cosmological constant, 186, 204
cosmological constant problem, 73, 96
cosmological principle, 181
Coulomb force, 34, 177, 205
Cowan, Clyde, 2
Cowie, Lennox, 132
cross-section: actual size containing reactions, 47–48
in a collider, 205
electron/proton, 28
cryogenic facility, largest in the world, 49
Crystal Ball experiment, at SLAC, 113
Curie, Pierre and Marie, 16, 34
Curie temperature, 84
current algebra sum rules, 8
Curtwright, Thomas, 98
cyclotron, 44, 45
D0 detector, at Fermilab, 14
dark energy, 73, 131, 205
dark matter, 53, 76, 132, 205. See also cold dark matter
dark-matter particles, ix, 76, 120
Darwin, Charles, 182
decay channels, 116
of the Higgs decaying to two photons, 157
predicted for the Higgs by the standard model, 102
problematic uncertainties in some, 200
showing a deficit of events at 125 GeV, 159
decay products, identifying, 40
decay rates, 40, 102, 166
de Coulomb, Charles Augustin, 205
deep inelastic scattering, 8
degree of freedom, 89, 164, 205
Democritus, 1
De Roeck, Albert, 169
de Rújula, Alvaro, xiii
DESY (Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron), 14, 48
detectors, 37–41, 50
Dicke, Robert, 181
Dimopoulos, Savas, 124
diphoton decay, tiny branching ratio of, 102
Dirac, Paul, 2, 17, 18, 19, 24, 82, 203, 205
Dirac equation, 2, 205
double cover, of O(3), 60
down quark (d), 7
drift chamber, 38, 205
Drozdeskiy, Alexey, 174
Dutta, Valentina, 194
duty cycle, of an accelerator, 48
Dyson, Freeman, 17, 82
early-universe cosmology, 186–187
earthly elements, as basic elements of the universe, 1
eclipsing sun, bending of light by, 15
Eddington, Arthur, 15, 141
effective field theory, 122
effective pseudoscalar Higgs boson model, 174
Efimov, Gary, 135
Eichten, Estia, 138, 166
Eightfold Way, 3, 5, 27, 60
Einstein, Albert, xi, 15, 133
calculating anomalous precession of Mercury, 14
freed from the concept of ether, 78
introduc
ed cosmological constant, 73
observation of Brownian motion, 32
postulated speed of light is constant, 61
elastic proton-electron scattering, 8
electric charges, 6, 64, 65
electricity, in an inverse square law, 16
electromagnetic calorimeter detectors, 39
electromagnetic fields: connection with phase of Dirac’s wave function, 22
determining ratio of charge to mass of the accelerating particles, 41
electric charge source of, 64
equations, 16
electromagnetic force, 20
electromagnetic photon fields, 142
electromagnetism, 16, 22, 142, 177, 205
electron neutrino, 15
electrons, x
acceleration of, 41
condensate from Cooper pair bound state, 93
detection of, 32
discovery of, 1, 41
energy increasing linearly, 33
mass coming from self-energy, 177
passing through electric field of a nucleus, 35
electroscope, 41
electroweak energy scale, 178
electroweak gauge theories, 130–150
electroweak symmetry, 68, 185
electroweak theory, 24, 205
alternative, xii
incorporated into QCD theory, 93
local, 145–146
making renormalizable, 69
models of without a Higgs boson, 105
as renormalizable, 93, 94
satisfactory without a Higgs boson, 146
standard, 119, 138, 139
in the standard model of particle physics, 68, 176
symmetry breaking in, 178
unification of weak interactions and electromagnetisim, 17
using Stuekelberg formalism, 142–143
valid up to a high energy, 143
elementary particle, x, 205
associated field with each, xii
Higgs boson as, 68
interacting with itself through fields, 138
masses produced by self-energies, xii, 138, 145
mechanism generating the masses of, 52
not containing more basic constituents, 68
spin and parity of, 195
elementary scalar particles, 146, 147
elementary spin-0 particle, 80
elliptical orbits, of the planets, 56
energy: coming in quantum packages, 17
quantization of, xiv
energy cutoff, 177, 205
energy density of the vacuum. See vacuum energy density
energy hierarchy problem, 127
Englert, Françoise, xi, 86, 89, 90, 98, 105, 108, 157, 160, 161
entire functions, 137
eta meson, 4
eternal inflation, 187
Cracking the Particle Code of the Universe Page 29
