Quantum Diaries

The Large Hadron Collider is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. Scientists predict that its very-high-energy proton collisions will yield extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, the LHC experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they do. The LHC experiments could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter, uncover hidden symmetries of the universe, and possibly find extra dimensions of space.

When the LHC reaches full power, billions of protons in its two counter-rotating particle beams will smash together at an energy of 14 trillion electron volts. After injection, the LHC accelerates a beam of hair-thin proton beams to a whisker below the speed of light. The beams circulate for hours, guided around the LHC ring by thousands of powerful superconducting magnets. For most of their split-second journey around the ring, the beams travel in two separate vacuum pipes, but at four points they collide in the hearts of the main experiments, known by their acronyms: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb.

The experiments' complex detectors could see up to 600 million collisions per second, as the energy of colliding protons transforms fleetingly into a plethora of exotic particles. In the data from these ultrahigh-energy collisions scientists from universities and laboratories around the world will search for the tracks of particles whose existence would transform the human understanding of the universe we live in.

US LHC Bloggers

Kevin Black I am an assistant professor at Boston University working on the ATLAS experiment. Specifically I focus on searches for exotic physics and studies of the top quark, and I am now working as the coordinator of the muon trigger for ATLAS. I have been on ATLAS since 2005 when I started as a postdoc at Harvard. I moved to BU as faculty in 2010. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Ken Bloom I am an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, involved with the CMS experiment at the LHC and the DØ experiment at Fermilab. Since 2005 I have been the project manager for the 7 US CMS Tier-2 computing sites, and I also co-lead a working group at Fermilab's LHC Physics Center. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Kyle Cranmer I am an assistant professor at New York University and a member of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics. I'm a member of the ATLAS Collaboration, though much of my work applies more broadly and I dabble in some other experiments. My primary research focus has been the search for the Higgs boson. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Brian Dorney I'm a graduate student at the Florida Institute of Technology studying high-energy physics (HEP). I take part in the CMS collaboration's B-Physics Group studying a theory called perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pOCD). This theory has had great success at predicting the experimental results seen at the Tevatron and other colliders. Author's Blog Author's Bio

James Faulkner I am a graduate student at Texas Tech University, studying experimental high-energy physics with the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. My studies have been with triple gauge boson production, along with anomalous quartic gauge coupling. I am also working with calibration efforts for the Hadronic Calorimeter for the CMS experiment during the current long shutdown, known as LS1. I have spent time at both Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and CERN for the mentioned analyses. Author's Blog Author's Bio

John Huth I'm a physics professor at Harvard University. I was born in London, England, and grew up in Philadelphia, PA. I got into particle physics because I felt that it tried to answer the deepest questions that humans can ask of the universe. I joined ATLAS in particular through my interest in the importance of using particles like muons to understand how the fundamental forces are unified. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Nathan Jurik I'm a graduate student from Syracuse University working on the LHCb experiment, and I am currently stationed at CERN. My research has been focused on the decays of charmed B mesons, which were first observed at the Tevatron roughly 15 years ago. However, not until the LHC began producing data have physicists been able to study their properties in detail. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Rosi Reed I'm a post-doc at Yale working on the ALICE experiment, where I hope to study the hot matter we call the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) produced in heavy ion collisions at the LHC. In particular I will be looking at jets, which are streams of particles that come from quarks or gluons that have a large energy. The way in which jets are modified as they travel through the QGP can tell us a great deal of its underlying properties. I grew up in Connecticut, and after 14 years of living in California, it is a little strange to back home. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Jim Rohlf I am a professor at Boston University and an experimental high-energy physicist. I have been a member of the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider since 1994 and have worked full time on this project since 2000. My scientific interest in the LHC is understanding the big-picture view of the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Flip Tanedo I'm a graduate student in theoretical particle physics at Cornell University. My research focuses on physics "beyond the Standard Model," such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions, and how such physics might manifest itself at the LHC. Author's Blog Author's Bio

Emily Thompson I am currently a postdoc researcher with Columbia University Nevis Laboratories, working on the ATLAS Experiment and living in Geneva. Right now my research interests include looking for new physics involving highly "boosted" top quarks, or top quarks that are created with a very high momentum. These tops are so boosted in fact, that if they decide to decay into a b-quark and a hadronically-decaying W boson, the decay products merge into a single big jet. To understand these properly, it becomes extremely important to study and measure the properties of jets that contain substructure. Additionally, during the long LHC shutdown that starts in 2013, I'll be spending a lot of time working underground in the ATLAS cavern on the Liquid Argon Calorimeter. Author's Blog Author's Bio

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