The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) yesterday presented the first results of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Paris (ICHEP 2010). Among the achievements of the accelerator, the first evidence ofobservation of the “top” quark, one of the fundamental constituents of matter, in a European laboratory.
Spokesmen for the four major LHC experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb) presented results from the three months ofLHC operation at 3.5 Teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam, an energy three and a half times greater than that achieved so far in a particle accelerator.
The researchers highlighted the good functioning of the machine, which has multiplied the number of collisions registered by more than a thousand, which has allowed“rediscover” known particles of the Standard Model, the theory that contains current knowledge about the particles that make up matter and the forces that act between them. This is an essential step before making other discoveries. ? It is amazing to see how quickly we have “re-discovered” known particles, from the lightest resonances to the heavy top quark – the last elementary particle discovered, in 1995 at the Tevatron, the Fermilab particle accelerator (USA). .) -. What we have shown here in Paris are only the first results of an intense campaign of precision measurements of its properties ,? said Guido Tonelli, one of the researchers.
CERN will keep the LHC operating at this energy level for a period of 18-24 months with the goal of accumulating enough data from the experiments to make significant advances in a wide range of physical processes. With the expected amount of data,a reverse femtobarn (i.e. about 10 trillion collisions), experiments must have the capacity to explore new territories, with the possibility of making significant discoveries. “The next step is for the LHC to show us what is new,” announced CERN Director General Rolf Heuer.
