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| Image Credit: CERN |
New experiments at CERN reveals strong interaction of Higgs Boson with the Top Quark
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) came into function on 10th September 2008 at CERN, Geneva and it is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world. It took over a decade by thousands of scientists, engineers and technicians from different countries to develop this complex particle accelerator facility. The LHC runs for 27 kilometre along a circular ring like tunnel and lies 175 metres below the ground. The entire ring like facility comprises of numerous superconducting magnets and some accelerators which immensely boost the energy of the particles along the way. Beams of two extremely high-energy particles like protons, travelling close to the speed of light along opposite directions are made to collide with each other. The superconducting magnets and accelerators provide the particles with near-light speed which in turn helps in the collision of two high-energy particles of same nature by overcoming the drastically huge inter-atomic repulsive forces. The two beams travel along opposite directions in separate ultra-high vacuum tubes with superconducting electromagnets providing strong magnetic fields to guide and focus the beams along the accelerator ring and then finally compact the particles in the beam close together to increase the chances of collisions. The superconducting electromagnets comprise of special coils out of electrical cables that can operate in superconducting state and thus can efficiently conduct electricity without any resistance or energy loss. Massive amount of heat are generated from the electromagnets and accelerators and to keep them in operation, they are needed to be continuously cooled to a ultra-low temperature of -271.3°C using liquid helium distribution system connected to the accelerator. The accelerator and all its infrastructures are controlled under a single roof from the CERN Control Centre which operates the beams inside the accelerator making them to collide at four positions along the ring where the four particle detector lies, namely ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb.
Recently, the ATLAS and CMS detectors reveal something strange characteristics of Higgs Boson that it interacts very strongly with the heaviest known elementary particle known as Top Quark. Quark is a fundamental elementary particle and main constituents of all matter which combine to form stable hadrons like protons and neutrons, the main constituents of atomic nucleus of our matter. Quarks are mainly of six types based on their charge and spin known as: top, bottom, up, down, charm and strange. Among them Top Quark is the heaviest and though it is a known fact that Higgs Boson interacts with heavier particles, it was proved during the process of decaying atoms of two photons having no mass. Higgs Boson can fluctuate into a top quark and an top anti-quark for very less amount of time according to quantum mechanics and then they converted into a pair of photons. The interaction between Higgs Boson and Top Quark is known as coupling which can be measured and the chances for the above way depends on the interaction strength of this coupling. The rigorous efforts and advance analysis techniques of the CMS and ATLAS team members experimentally proved the main feature of the Standard Model that Higgs Boson contributes greatly towards the mass of Top Quark. The Standard Model describes the interaction among the building blocks of matter following fundamental forces. But the measurement for this process is really very difficult as Higgs Boson and Top Quark rapidly decay into other particles by several complex routes and the process is also rare because only 1% of Higgs Boson are produced with two top quarks. This indicates that the most complex machine of the world, the LHC is performing very well which lead to the finding of such an important outcome and that also at such an early stage of LHC's performance. The endless efforts of the team members, advance analysis techniques and unique approaches have helped to experimentally verify the theoretical findings. We are awaiting more amazing and interesting findings regarding these fundamental elementary particles in the upcoming days.
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