10 years since Higgs boson discovery

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the experimental confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC accelerator at CERN released in 2022 the most extensive overviews of experimental verification of its production methods to date [1,2]. Specifically, it concerns measuring its production rate, including the associated production with a pair of top quarks, and its decay fractions to different particles, from two photons, Z or W bosons to pairs of b-quarks.

The ATLAS experiment involves scientific groups from around the world, including the Joint Laboratory of Optics at Palacký University, which is one of four Czech institutions actively involved in its development, operations and data analysis, including education of new scientists in the field of particle physics. Processes involving top quarks (the heaviest known elementary particles) are of special interest as they occur in several production channels of the Higgs boson, where the top quark may serve as a window to possible new physics beyond the Standard Model. Scientists from the Joint Laboratory of Optics contribute to the physical analysis of processes involving top quarks, both in proton collisions and in data where the LHC collides protons with lead nuclei. They also measure the multiplicity of charged particles at the new energy of the accelerator of 13.6 TeV, the results of which will lead to refinement of models of particle interactions, with applications in astroparticle physics as well. Thus, the Joint Laboratory of Optics actively participates in the exploration of the fundamental mechanisms of the microcosm. Involvement in experiments at CERN allows scientists and students from the Joint Laboratory of Optics to participate in some of the most complex experiments in history, which would not be feasible without long-term and broad international scientific and technical cooperation and political support.

Feynman diagrams for Higgs boson production and decay [1].

[1] The ATLAS Collaboration (Černý, K.; Hrabovský M.; Komárek T.; Kvita J.; Nožka L.; Pácalt J.): A detailed map of Higgs boson interactions by the ATLAS experiment ten years after the discovery | Nature 607, 52–59 (2022).
[2] The CMS Collaboration: A portrait of the Higgs boson by the CMS experiment ten years after the discovery | Nature 607, 60–68 (2022)