Five years ago, on 4th of July 2012, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the elusive particle whose discovery had been expected by generations of particle physicists for almost half a century. The ATLAS and CMS experiments at the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), had both found - independently from each other – “clear signs of a new particle” at the mass of 125.3 ± 0.6 GeV to be “consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson”.
This rather cautious formulation was consciously chosen because the final identification of the discovered particle required further verification. The thrilling question was if the particle satisfied all the predictions of the standard model and would be the long-sought Higgs boson or if it might be a particle only similar to the Higgs boson. In the following time, it became clear that the discovered particle with its measured properties corresponded with high likeliness to the mysterious Higgs boson.
Since the existence of the Higgs boson was theoretically predicted by the works of physicists Peter W. Higgs, Franҫois Englert, Robert Brout, and others in the 1960s, the enormous efforts to experimentally verify this elementary particle could be depicted as the search for the holy grail of particle physics for about 50 years.
Awarding the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 to Peter Higgs and Franҫois Englert impressively underlines the significance of the theory known as Higgs mechanism, later called “Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism”.
Generations of researchers have devoted their career to the discovery of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle whose existence would complete the highly successful theory of the standard model of particle physics. While the standard model describes the composition and structure of matter, the Higgs boson and the BEH mechanism have no minor importance than providing an answer to the question: How does matter obtain mass?
A standard model without the BEH mechanism would only describe a world without mass, which wouldn’t have anything in common with the universe we know.
Therefore, a theory describing nature as completely as possible must incorporate the concept of mass, meaning for the standard model that also the BEH mechanism and thus the Higgs boson had to be proven experimentally.
Although the theory of the Higgs boson is notoriously abstract and not easily accessible, the Higgs boson has become a sort of pop star of physics. Not least because of the popularity of the subject and the relatively large public interest, the search for the Higgs boson was pursued with an international effort and expense that seek their kind in the history of science.
For a deeper understanding of the Higgs boson and what it's all about, the underlying concepts and ideas leading to its discovery and beyond, read our eBook: "The Mystery of the Higgs Boson"