UCLA Involvement in the Particle Accelerator That Will Revolutionize Our View of the Atom and the Early Universe

By Katy Tschann-Grimm
Staff Writer

One of the fundamental questions of science has always been "What is matter made of?" Physicists continue to search for a more complete answer to this question at the CERN Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland, the largest particle physics research center in the world. I talked to Professor Bob Cousins about the research that UCLA is involved in at CERN.

Cousins is in a research group with fellow UCLA professors (check) Dr. Jay Hauser, Dr. David Cline, Dr. Katsushi Arisaka, and Dr. Peter Schlein, preparing for experiments with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that is under construction at CERN. The LHC smashes together protons and ions at energies higher than ever before achieved. In fact the energies are so high that the accelerator will be used to understand the conditions at the time of the Big Bang. This new accelerator is anticipated to bring huge developments to our picture of the atom. Cousins explained that between about 1950 and 1980 the model of the atom went through revolutionary changes as quarks were found inside protons and neutrons and a "Standard Model" of how quarks work was developed. So much was found out about the fundamentals of matter that since that time comparatively little has changed in the field. But the scientists at CERN hope to "break open the field of particle physics again," as Dr. Cousins put it.

The plan is to find the Higgs boson particle as the origin of all mass and in so doing, to tear down the Standard Model as the correct view of matter. (Physicists seem to delight in breaking down the fundamental concepts that their field is based on!) Cousins says that it is likely that the new accelerator will find more than just the Higgs boson particle; Supersymmetric particles, Technicolor, and Dynamical Symmetry Breaking (and all sorts of bizarrely named things) are all hoped-for discoveries. The experiment's results will advance understanding of the universe and its origins.

UCLA is currently constructing chambers to be used for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment in the new CERN accelerator. Other preparation includes creating programs that simulate the data the experiments will produce and creating programs that can analyze this data and the actual experimental data once it is created. Physicists work to perfect analyzing techniques though the first real data isn’t expected until 2007.