CMS

Those who study particle physics will find that every step of the journey offers a new perspective and new set of responsibilities. Symmetry chats with scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider to hear about differences between seven different rungs on the academic career ladder.

The USCMS collaboration has received approval from the Department of Energy to move forward with final planning for upgrades to the giant CMS particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider. The upgrades will enable it to take clearer, more precise images of particle events emerging from the upcoming High-Luminosity LHC, whose collision rate will get a 10-fold boost compared to the collider’s design value when it comes online in 2027.

From CERN, Oct. 15, 2019: A new result by the CMS Collaboration narrows down the mass of the Higgs boson to a precision of 0.1%. After reporting the observation of the Higgs boson at the CERN LHC in 2012, scientists the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have been busy understanding exactly its place within the standard model of particle physics. Any straying from expectations could be an indication of new physics.

From CERN, Oct. 7, 2019: The CMS collaboration has measured for the first time the variation, or “running,” of the top quark mass. The theory of quantum chromodynamics predicts this energy-scale variation for the masses of all quarks and for the strong force acting between them. Observing the running masses of quarks can therefore provide a way of testing quantum chromodynamics and the Standard Model.

The Big Bang Science Fair brings science communication and outreach to an arts festival in Rhode Island. The event is filled with presentations, workshops and hands-on activities covering a wide range of scientific disciplines. It makes its second appearance later this month.

Working on hardware doesn’t come easily to all physicists, but Francesca Ricci-Tam has learned that what matters most is a willingness to put in the practice.

For years, U.S. institutions have been working to upgrade the hardware in the behemoth CMS particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider, enabling it to profit fully from the LHC’s increasing collision energy and intensity. With CD-4 approval, the Department of Energy formally recognized that the USCMS collaboration, managed by Fermilab, met every stated goal of the upgrade program — on time and under budget.

From MIT News, Aug. 19, 2019: A new prototype machine-learning technology co-developed by Fermilab and MIT scientists speeds Large Hadron Collider data processing by up to 175 times over traditional methods.

A new machine learning technology tested by Fermilab scientists and collaborators can spot specific particle signatures among an ocean of LHC data in the blink of an eye, much faster than standard methods. Sophisticated and swift, its performance gives a glimpse into the game-changing role machine learning will play in making future discoveries in particle physics as data sets get bigger and more complex.

From Texas Tech Today, Aug. 5, 2019: Texas Tech physicists have been looking for dark matter at the CMS experiment at CERN and studying neutrinos.