IIHE and the Nobel Prize in Physics

The IIHE and the CMS detector

The CMS detector is a huge machine designed to record particles that emerge from high energy proton collisions. It functions like a three dimensional camera, taking a snapshot of each collision. The rate of collisions is so high that only the most interesting events are stored to disk.

For more details see the CMS public page.

The IIHE has provided an important contribution to the development of the hardware for CMS and played key roles at all levels of the experimental work, from the detector running and optimisation to the physics results publications. Below are images of the tracker endcap petals during their development and installation.

A technician at the IIHE assembles one of the tracker endcap petals (left), which is then added to the endcap (right).

The boson discovery

On the 4th of July 2012 the CMS and ATLAS Collaborations announced the discovery of the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson during a special seminar at CERN. The discovery made headline news around the world. Even the Belgian Prime minister, Elio Di Rupo, shared the excitement! François Englert discussed the research wih him at CERN with the CMS detector in the background. Analysis of the properties of boson continues as a very active area of research and the IIHE plays a role in these studies.

François Englert discussing with the belgian Prime Minister in front of the CMS detector.

To understand how Brout and Englert predicted the scalar field in 1964, see the dedicated page from the ULB Service de Physique Théorique.