Electroweak unification and the Higgs boson
Does the electroweak theory unifying electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force correctly predict a Higgs boson responsible for elementary-particle masses, and can that particle actually be found?
History and references
Settled in 2012 by ATLAS and CMS Collaborations, CERN LHC.
By 1999 the electroweak theory itself (Nobel 1979) and the W+/-, Z0 bosons (discovered 1983, Nobel 1984) were already established; the missing piece was the Higgs boson giving these particles mass. On 4 July 2012, ATLAS and CMS at the LHC independently announced discovery of a new ~125 GeV particle consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson, published that September in Physics Letters B; the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Englert and Higgs for the 1964 theoretical prediction.
A single field filling all of space, found by smashing protons together 27 kilometers underground, turns out to be the reason anything has mass at all.
References
- What problems of physics and astrophysics seem now to be especially important and interesting (thirty years later, already on the verge of the XXI century)?, V L Ginzburg, Physics-Uspekhi 42 (4) 353-373, 1999
- Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, ATLAS Collaboration, Physics Letters B 716, 1, 2012
- Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC, CMS Collaboration, Physics Letters B 716, 30, 2012
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