The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World (48 page)

P. W. Anderson, “Coherent Excited States in the Theory of Superconductivity: Gauge Invariance and the Meissner Effect,”
Physical Review
110
, 827 (1958).

P. W. Anderson, “Random-Phase Approximation in the Theory of Superconductivity,”
Physical Review
112
, 1900 (1958).

Y. Nambu, “Quasiparticles and Gauge Invariance in the Theory of Superconductivity,”
Physical Review
117
, 648 (1960).

Y. Nambu and G. Jona-Lasinio, “Dynamical Model of Elementary Particles Based on an Analogy with Superconductivity, I,”
Physical Review
124
, 246 (1961).

Y. Nambu and G. Jona-Lasinio, “Dynamical Model of Elementary Particles Based on an Analogy with Superconductivity, II,”
Physical Review
122
, 345 (1961).

S. L. Glashow, “Partial Symmetries of the Weak Interactions,”
Nuclear Physics
22
, 579 (1961).

J. Goldstone, “Field Theories with Superconductor Solutions,”
Nuovo Cimento
19
, 154 (1961).

J. Goldstone, A. Salam, and S. Weinberg, “Broken Symmetries,”
Physical Review
127
, 965 (1962).

J. Schwinger, “Gauge Invariance and Mass,”
Physical Review
125
, 397 (1962).

P. W. Anderson, “Plasmons, Gauge Invariance, and Mass,”
Physical Review
130
, 439 (1963).

A. Klein and B. Lee, “Does Spontaneous Breakdown of Symmetry Imply Zero-Mass Particles?”
Physical Review Letters
12
, 266 (1964).

W. Gilbert, “Broken Symmetries and Massless Particles,”
Physical Review Letters
12
, 713 (1964).

F. Englert and R. Brout, “Broken Symmetry and the Mass of Gauge Vector Mesons,”
Physical Review Letters
13
, 321 (1964).

P. W. Higgs, “Broken Symmetries, Massless Particles, and Gauge Fields,”
Physics Letters
12
, 134 (1964).

P. W. Higgs, “Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons,”
Physical Review Letters
13
, 508 (1964).

A. Salam and J. C. Ward, “Electromagnetic and Weak Interactions,”
Physics Letters
13
, 168 (1964).

G. S. Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. B. Kibble, “Global Conservation Laws and Massless Particles,”
Physical Review Letters
13
, 585 (1964).

P. W. Higgs, “Spontaneous Symmetry Breakdown Without Massless Bosons,”
Physical Review
145
, 1156 (1966).

A. Migdal and A. Polyakov, “Spontaneous Breakdown of Strong Interaction Symmetry and the Absence of Massless Particles,”
Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics
(USSR)
51
, 135 [
Soviet Physics-JETP
24
, 91] (1966).

T. W. B. Kibble, “Symmetry Breaking in Non-Abelian Gauge Theories,”
Physical Review
155
, 1554 (1967).

S. Weinberg, “A Model of Leptons,”
Physical Review Letters
19
, 1264 (1967).

A. Salam, “Weak and Electromagnetic Interactions,”
Elementary Particle Theory: Proceedings of the Nobel Symposium held in 1968 at Lerum, Sweden
, N. Svartholm, ed., p. 367. Almqvist and Wiksell (1968).

G. ’t Hooft, “Renormalizable Lagrangians for Massive Yang-Mills Fields,”
Nuclear Physics B
44
, 189 (1971).

G. ’t Hooft and M. Veltman, “Regularization and Renormalization of Gauge Fields,”
Nuclear Physics B
44
, 189 (1972).

Chapter Twelve: Beyond This Horizon

Rubin: Ken Croswell.
The Universe at Midnight: Observations Illuminating the Cosmos
. New York: Free Press (2001).

Patt and Wilczek: B. Patt and F. Wilczek, “Higgs-field Portal into Hidden Sectors,” http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0605188

dark-matter collisions with the human body: K. Freese and C. Savage, “Dark Matter Collisions with the Human Body,” http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1204.1339

“Higgs in Space”: C. B. Jackson, et al., “Higgs in Space,”
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
4
, 4 (2010).

Shaposhnikov and Tkachev: M. Shaposhnikov and I.I. Tkachev, “Higgs Boson Mass and the Anthropic Principle,”
Modern Physics Letters
A
5,
1659 (1990).

106 GeV: B. Feldstein, L. Hall, and T. Watari, “Landscape Predictions for Higgs Boson and Top Quark Masses,”
Physical Review
D
74,
095011 (2006).

Weinberg: S. Weinberg,
Physical Review Letters
59
, 2607 (1987).

Chapter Thirteen: Making It Worth Defending

Wilson: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2011/09/23/protons-and-pistols-remembering-robert-wilson/

Weinberg: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/10/crisis-big-science/

National Journal
: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/05/higgs-boson-find-could-make-light-speed-travel-possible-scientists-hope/

Mansfield 1: E. Mansfield, “Academic Research and Industrial Innovation,”
Research Policy
20
, 1 (1991).

Mansfield 2: E. Mansfield, “Academic Research and Industrial Innovation: An Update of Empirical Findings,”
Research Policy
26
, 773 (1998).

Cartoon: Z. Weiner,
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
, http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2088

Yahia: http://blogs.nature.com/houseofwisdom/2012/07/the-social-aspect-of-the-higgs-boson.html

Evans: interview, July 4, 2012.

Appendices

For more on helicity, see F. Tanedo, “Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs,” http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/06/19/helicity-chirality-mass-and-the-higgs/

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I make my living as a physicist, but my specialty is theoretical gravitation and cosmology; in particle physics I am a semi-tourist, and I haven’t been involved directly in an experiment since I was an undergraduate. I owe an enormous debt to a large number of people who generously helped me during this project, both by sharing their insights and by reading drafts of the book.

A number of physicists who work on this stuff for a living were kind enough to be interviewed for this book, either by phone or by email. It’s a pleasure to thank Philip Anderson, John Conway, Gerald Guralnik, Fabiola Gianotti, JoAnne Hewett, Joe Incandela, Gordy Kane, David Kaplan, Mike Lamont, Joe Lykken, Jack Steinberger, Gordon Watts, Frank Wilczek, and Sau Lan Wu for enormously helpful conversations. Mistakes are all completely my fault, needless to say—and my apologies for using only a tiny fraction of the stories I was told.

I was also fortunate enough to get help from both professional physicists and amateur lovers of science who answered specific questions or offered comments on the text. Big thanks to Allyson Beatrice, Dan Birman, Matt Buckley, Alicia Chang, Lauren Gunderson, Kevin Hand, Ann Kottner, Rick Loverd, Rusi Mchedlishvili, Philip Phillips, Abbas Raza, Henry Reich, Ira Rothstein, Maria Spiropulu, David Saltzberg, Matt Strassler, and Zach Weinersmith for spending time reading the book and offering input. Their comments have improved the manuscript a millionfold. Special thanks to Zach for sharing the comic reprinted in the insert, which says it all.

Thanks to my students and collaborators, who once again showed great patience with me when I would disappear for lengthy stretches of time. (At least they seemed patient from where I was sitting.) And let me send my appreciation to all the readers of our blog,
Cosmic Variance
, and everyone who comes to hear me talk about these topics in public lectures. I am constantly amazed and delighted at the genuine enthusiasm for science and learning that I encounter on a regular basis.

Without my editor, Stephen Morrow, and the good folks at Dutton, this book would have likely never been instigated, and if it had it wouldn’t have been nearly as good. Without my agents, Katinka Matson and John Brockman, I probably wouldn’t be writing books in the first place.

In the dedication to their famous textbook
Gravitation
, Charles Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Wheeler express their thanks to their fellow citizens for supporting public expenditures on science. For giant projects like the Large Hadron Collider, more than a little bit of government spending is required, as well as an impressive amount of international collaboration. Sincere thanks to all the people of all the countries of the world who help enable the quest to discover nature’s deepest secrets. Reporting back on the wonders we have found is really the least we can do.

I fell in love with the talented writer Jennifer Ouellette because of her good looks, piercing intellect, and engaging personality, not because she is endlessly patient and extremely helpful when it comes to writing books. But it is a nice side benefit. My eternal love and appreciation.

INDEX

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

Note: page numbers in
italics
indicate charts and illustrations.

Accademia Belle Arti, 67–68

action at a distance, 116, 119–20

aesthetic value of basic research, 278

aether, 10, 139

ALEPH, 64, 65

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 207

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), 97–98

Alvarez, Luis, 56, 106

Alvarez, Walter, 56

American Physical Society (APS), 71–72, 240

Anderson, Carl, 44–45,
46,
48, 97

Anderson, Philip, 72, 215, 219–21, 223–26, 238–39, 256

angular momentum, 284–85, 285–87

anthropic principle, 266–67

antimatter, 43–46, 200–201, 268

antiparticles

antibottom quarks, 171,
171,
187

anticharm quarks,
171

antineutrinos, 133–34

antiprotons, 56, 62

antiquarks, 101–4,
102,
169

anti-tau leptons,
171

antitop quark, 170

and dark matter, 246

and Higgs decay modes, 171–74,
173

tau-antitau pairs,
171,
172,
173,
187