Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

It’s elementary:of quarks, leptonsand neutrinosFar beyond what the human eye can discern, beyond cellsand beyond molecules and atoms, the universe is madeup of elementary particles. On the basis of what is knowntoday, those particles – namely quarks, charged leptons andneutrinos – cannot be broken down any further. They are thusconsidered to be the basic building blocks of the universe. Theirfundamental interactions can, by and large, be described bythe Standard Model of particle physics that was establishedin the 1960s and 70s. While the fi ndings of all high-energyphysics experiments conducted since the mid-20th centuryare covered by this model, it is still considered incomplete;for instance, it does not take into account gravity or darkmatter. And scientists believe that it does not describe certainphenomena accurately.It is out of this belief that the Quest for Unifi cation networkwent to work, looking to align theory and experiment to agreater degree. ‘Our aim was to probe the physics of strong,electromagnetic and weak interactions beyond the currenttheory,’ explains network coordinator Professor IgnatiosAntoniadis of the Centre of Theoretical Physics at the ÉcolePolytechnique in Palaiseau, France, and of the Theory Unit atthe European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) inGeneva, Switzerland. ‘Another issue was to unify the quantumdescription of elementary particles with gravitational force. Theresearch goals of our network were strongly motivatedby the large amount of experimental data expected overthe next years and by the prospect of important progress inseveral areas of theoretical physics.’Tiny particles, huge breakthroughsWe do not have to wait for progress, however – it has already beenmade through this Marie Curie Network. One area of advanceis the Higgs boson. Popularly known as ‘the God particle’, theCompact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector: simulated Higgs production and decay© CERN329