Adventure Of The Large Hadron Collider, The: From The Big Bang To The Higgs Boson

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This book introduces the world of quarks and leptons, exploring their interactions through fundamental symmetries of nature and the connection between the infinitesimally small and the infinitely large. It begins with a straightforward presentation of the Standard Model, detailing its gradual evolution since the 1960s, key experiments that established it, and its conceptual weaknesses. The narrative then shifts to the remarkable story of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the largest scientific project ever undertaken, highlighting the global collaboration involved in its unprecedented design and construction. Readers gain a contemporary appreciation (as of 2020) of the LHC's physics exploration, including studies of new forms of matter, symmetry-breaking phenomena, and exciting searches for new physics like dark matter and additional space dimensions. The adventure culminates in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, which earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. The final chapter outlines the LHC's plans for the next 15 years, including potential advancements and future collider projects. The authors, researchers from CERN, CEA, and CNRS, provide an engaging and accessible perspective on this extraordinary scientific journey, with some having been involved since the project's inception.