Particle physics offers an opportunity to shed light on new mysteries ****************************************************************************************** * Particle physics offers an opportunity to shed light on new mysteries ****************************************************************************************** A team of physicists and students from the CU Faculty of Mathematics and Physics working o ATLAS experiment received the Miloslav Petrusek Award for the presentation of the Charles festive ceremony in the Carolinum on April 3. We have asked Doc. Rupert Leitner, who recei behalf of the team, to tell us about the search for Higgs boson. You joined the ATLAS experiment in the early stages of its preparation and had an opportun development since the very beginning. Could you tell us how international cooperation has years?  We started to work on the ATLAS experiment with colleagues from the CU Faculty of Mathemat the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the Czech Te University about twenty years ago. I had the unique opportunity to be part of the whole pr experiment, its construction up to the acquisition of the fundamental physical results. I the enthusiasm when modelling the physical processes or manufacturing components of the AT our institutes and in the companies in the Czech Republic as well as the days we spent tes ´s components in local and foreign labs. Our team currently focuses on ensuring the operation and upgrades of the ATLAS detectors´ particularly on analysing the acquired data on proton collisions in the LHC accelerator. S colleagues have been directly involved in the measurements of the Higgs boson properties; been researching properties of the heaviest top quark, looking for rare ways of the decay the bottom quark and measuring the dispersion of protons into small angles. The group of p students researching the collisions of lead nucleus has earned a great international reput International cooperation is a natural part of particle physics; after all, CERN was found foster cooperation among European nations. It continuously compares the level of scientifi education as well as standards of administrative efficiency. The LHC project is a specific streamlining the potential of the CERN member states and other countries all over the worl of constructing the most powerful particle accelerator. In addition to its scientific impo represents an extremely interesting experiment in managing cooperation among thousands of As you may know, two leaders of the ATLAS experiment, Peter Jenni and Fabiola Gianotti, ha a number of international awards. Both of them have always been extremely supportive of th of the Czech institutions in the ATLAS project; they have highly valued cooperation with t researchers, and they have received honours from our university for that. Doctor Peter Jen Charles University medal in 2001 and Fabiola Gianotti was awarded a commemorative medal of of Mathematics and Physics last year. You have received the award for promoting the project in the media. What, in your view, is contribution of this type of scientific cooperation to the overall climate in the Czech sc and the Czech society as a whole? The award was presented to the team of physicists and students from the CU Faculty of Math Physics working on the ATLAS experiment. Understandably enough, I am extremely happy that together with our colleagues from the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of t and the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Palacký University Olomouc, has parti a major scientific discovery. On top of the indisputable scientific contribution of CERN´s it was mainly thanks to the dedicated work of my colleagues in recent years that we have m public awareness of particle physics and of such key terms as ATLAS, CERN, LHC and Higgs b country. Fundamental research, the immediate practical usefulness of which is unpredictabl quite distant, has proved to be interesting for the general public, who positively perceiv there”. However, only a fundamental research that stands whatever quality tests and brings about the world can be easily defended and justified. Knowledge and skills gained by academics and students during their work on such an outstan invaluable for Charles University. Dozens of Czech teachers, too, have been acquainted wit touch with top-level contemporary science is an extraordinary experience for them.    For young people particle physics is a textbook illustration of science, which represents opportunity to explore new mysteries as well as an opportunity for a meaningful fulfilment Recent reports on the progress in search for Higgs boson have attracted a lot of attention latest results? In July of 2012 teams of physicists from the ATLAS and CMS experiments in the European Lab Particle Physics CERN announced the discovery of a new boson with a mass of 125 GeV. This a result of exploring the products of proton collisions in the LHC accelerator. The amount of experimental data gathered between July 2012 and the shutdown of the LHC mor Apart from confirming the existence of a new particle the research focused on detailed stu properties aimed at revealing whether this was indeed the long-sought Higgs boson or not. numbers have been exactly determined in theory: it is supposed to be an elementary particl the simplest version of the theory says only one electrically neutral Higgs boson with a + exist.  Even though the theory cannot predict the Higgs boson mass, as soon as the mass is experim the theory precisely predicts how often and into which particles the Higgs boson should de results announced by the two experiments at the March 2013 conferences show that the measu observed decay modes of a new boson and the quantum numbers correspond to the theoretical that the new boson is most likely THE Higgs boson. The decays of the new particle into a pair of Z bosons and Gamma quanta have been observed been evidence of the particle decaying into a pair of W bosons and a pair of the heaviest All of these are decays of an electrically neutral particle. The value of the mass will be measuring the momentum and the energy of the decay products and by making use of the relat conservation of energy and momentum. The existence of the decay into a pair of Gamma quant the new boson has a spin-0; the exotic option of a spin-2 also remains in play. By analysi into the pair of Z bosons it is also possible to determine internal parity, a measurement particle with zero spin and +parity consistent with the Higgs boson theory.  Current measurements are based on a few dozens of observations of decays into a pair of Z thousand of decays into a pair of Gamma. Much more data still have to be amassed in order whether it is specifically a Higgs boson or one of more Higgs bosons and to confirm other further analyse its properties. That is why the LHC accelerator and the detectors are now order to double the energy and increase the intensity of proton collisions.