July 2, 2012

Update on Higgs Boson Search to be Presented at CERN Seminar by UC Santa Barbara Physics Professor

George Foulsham

The status of the search for the Higgs boson will be presented at a seminar at CERN on July 4 by Joe Incandela, professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara and spokesperson for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment.

CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, is the location of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator. The CMS experiment is one of two general-purpose experiments, which operate like giant cameras that record images of the particles produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions. The other experimental collaboration, ATLAS, will also present an update at the joint seminar.

The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs, one of the theorists who predicted the particle's existence some 50 years ago as part of the explanation for why most of the fundamental particles of matter, such as the electron, have mass.

The UCSB High Energy Physics group has a large effort on the CMS experiment, involving some 30 faculty, engineers, and students, including postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate. Additional details will follow after the seminar.

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