François Englert and Peter Higgs receive Nobel Prize in Physics 2013
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 has been awarded to the Belgian François Englert and the Brit Peter Higgs and their contribution to the Higgs research. Higgs and Englert received the prize for the theory they formulated for the so-called Higgs mechanism. The mechanism explains why elementary particles have mass and requires the existence of a new particle, the Higgs particle. In July 2012 researchers at CERN discovered a new particle in the ATLAS and CMS experiments that later proved to be a Higgs particle. This result confirms the theory from the 1970s. A large number of Nikhef researchers were closely involved in the spectacular discovery of the Higgs particle. The Nobel Prize will be presented on 10 December 2013 in Stockholm.
Professor Frank Linde, director of Nikhef responded enthusiastically: "Fantastic that half a century of theoretical speculation and an intense experimental quest has now been rewarded with the highest scientific honour: the Nobel Prize. It is also great that our institute has made a contribution to this. The success would have equally been crowned if the Nobel Committee had awarded the prize to CERN instead! Perhaps an idea for next year?"
Professor Paul de Jong, joint programme leader of the Nikhef ATLAS group and professor at the University of Amsterdam: "The awarding of the Nobel Prize to Peter Higgs and Franҫois Englert honours a theory that was already devised in the 1960s, but has only been confirmed experimentally in the past year at the Large Hadron Collider. It never ceases to amaze me how human intellect is capable of discerning the subtleties of nature, and the prize for Higgs and Englert is thoroughly deserved. Without the Higgs mechanism, or an alternative for this, stable material cannot exist. And nature has released its secrets: Higgs was right! I am also proud of the experiments that led to the discovery of the Higgs particle: they required a vision and an enormous effort, and they form a textbook case of what international collaboration can achieve. And I am proud of our own groups in Amsterdam and Nijmegen that played a leading role in the discovery of the Higgs particle with the ATLAS experiment, from the construction of the detector to the production of the last, all-revealing graph".
Professor Nicolo de Groot, joint programme leader of the Nikhef ATLAS group and professor at Radboud University Nijmegen: "This is first and foremost a prize for theoretical physics, for the groundbreaking work that was down almost 50 years ago by Higgs, Brout and Englert. We are of course extremely proud of our experimental contribution to the discovery of the Higgs particle, as a result of which the theory has at last been confirmed".
The Higgs mechanism
At first glance, the concept of mass does not seem to fit in the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. Several physicists, including professors Peter Higgs and François Englert, developed a mechanism in 1964 that, if added to the equations of the Standard Model, would permit particles to have mass. This is now known as the Higgs mechanism. According to the theory , the Higgs mechanism works as a medium that exists everywhere in space. Peter Higgs pointed out that the mechanism required the existence of a then unknown particle that we now call the Higgs particle.
Confirmation of the theory
On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiment teams at CERN announced the discovery of a new particle that matched the long sought Higgs particle. Following the analysis of even more data the teams could confirm in March 2013 that the discovery was indeed a Higgs particle. Researchers are now working on accurately measuring all of the characteristics of the Higgs particle and comparing these with the characteristics predicted.
Dutch contribution
A large number of Nikhef researchers were closely involved in the Higgs research. They made important contributions to all areas of the ATLAS experiment: hardware (including the design and construction of important components of the ATLAS detector), computing (Tier-1 LHC computing centre), software (including improvements to the identification of muons), analysis of the measurement results (also decay channels) and the statistical combination of the different data sets. Researchers from the University of Twente also collaborated on the accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (magnets). Various Dutch researchers have also worked or are working at CERN.
Prizes
Earlier this year, Nikhef director professor Frank Linde and professor Stan Bentvelsen (former programme leaders of the Dutch ATLAS group) received the 'Physicaprijs 2013' for their contributions to the discovery of the Higgs particle with the ATLAS detector. The High Energy and Particle Physics Prize, which the European Physical Society awards each year to 'an exceptional contribution to high energy physics' went this year to the ATLAS and CMS collaborations due to 'the discovery of the Higgs boson as had been predicted by the Brout-Englert-Higgs-mechanisms'. Three research leaders from CERN shared the prize 'for their pioneering work and exceptionally good leadership in the design of the ATLAS and CMS experiments'. Nikhef is involved in the ATLAS experiment.
For further information
• You can contact Dr. Vanessa Mexner, Science Communication Department Nikhef, +31 (0)20 592 50 75, or see http://www.nikhef.nl/nieuws-events/media/ www.nikhef.nl/nieuws-events/media/
• KNAW organised an evening about the Nobel prizes 2013 on 9 October 2013
• You can look at various broadcasts:
- Bentvelsen talked about the Higgs research at the annual congress of FOM, Physics@FOM Veldhoven, at the start of this year;
- the Dutch children's TV programme Klokhuis transmitted an item about this research on 2 October 2013;
- on the YouTube channel FOMphysics there is a short introduction about Nikhef, and the documentary from 2012 about the quest for the Higgs particle featuring Peter Higgs and Dutch researchers.