Why build the Large Hadron Collider? - page 6
Keywords: Physics Report Large Hadron Collider Basic Introduction Grand Unified Theory Cosmic Rays Anti Matter Extra Dimensions String Theory Dark Matter Higgs Boson
By Jenny on 02/07/2009
Level: A Level (Year 13)
Page Number: 6 of 16 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
tracker), which has been enormously magnified relative to the rest of the detector. The colours of the thin tracks have no significance. The thick yellow lines are the two electrons in this event. The green area is the electromagnetic calorimeter, while the red area is the hadronic calorimeter. The green and red histograms show the energy deposits by particles in the electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters. A muon was added by hand to the event to show how it would look in the detector; it is a thick blue line in the inner detector and orange in the (blue) muon chambers.[18]
This hypothetical collision shows a Higgs boson plus a jet in the opposite direction where the Higgs boson decays to two Z bosons with one Z boson decaying to e+ e- and the other to μ+ μ-.[18]
This event shows the production of a pair of symmetric particles which decay yielding: six jets of particles, two muons and missing energy in the direction transverse to the beam of 283 GeV.[18]
Questions
The LHC hopes to find answers too many of physic’s unanswered questions and mysteries, and to be able to confirm or disprove several theories; from the search for the Higgs boson and a Grand Unified Theory to quark-gluon plasmas.
HIGGS BOSON AND THE ORIGIN OF MASS
One of the LHC’s main goals is to discover and study the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is central to current particle theories, explaining the origin of particle mass and therefore all mass.
The LHC has two large general purpose detectors (ATLAS and CMS) which will analyse the huge amounts of particles produced by the collisions in the collider. They are both designed to be able to investigate the largest possible range of physics and both of them will be searching for the Higgs boson. The LHC has two different and independently designed detectors with the same scientific goals, in order that if something is discovered with one, the other can be used to confirm it. [1]
The Standard Model is a particle physics theory that describes three out of the four known fundamental interactions (electromagnetism, the strong and weak forces and gravity) between the fundamental particles (quarks, leptons and gauge bosons [force carrying particles]) that make up matter. It unifies the electroweak theory (a unification of the electromagnetic and weak force found when it was realised that above certain high energies they become basically the same) and quantum chromodynamics
Last 5 comments…
There have been no comments posted for this article, but you need to register if you want to be the first!