Frontier Physics

At the energy frontier, there are prospectors and surveyors. And of course absolutely no cowboys.

Shamefacedly I return, in the wake of Lily's highly praised and commented favourite particle article and her musical interlude. Rather than whine about how I have been too busy to write, I will write about some of what I've been doing. There's a fair chance that if I find it absorbing and exciting (and I do, mostly) then some of you will too.

I have been trying, with the rest of the ATLAS collaboration, to digest, understand and publish the vast amount of first-time physics information buried in the millions of proton-proton collisions the Large Hadron Collider gave us last year.

What we've done so far in terms of published, solid results is listed here. That's a list of papers from all LHC experiments, but I am aware that's a bit hard to digest. So having digested it once, I will now turn round and digest it again. Like a rabbit*.

The publications from ATLAS can pretty much be divided into two types. There are the searches for new stuff, and there are the measurements of new stuff.

The first type are the prospectors. They zoom into the new landscape of physics and look for quick wins, for really unusual and surprising features. If they don't see them, we have learned something about the new land "Hey, no gold volcanoes yet!" (or no supersymmetry yet, no black holes yet...). Of course, if anyone finds a gold volcano, they've got it made. And those things seriously might be out there; similar surprises have turned up before, many times. We're only in the foothills so far.

Mountains etc
Jon Butterworth/Jon B

Alongside but often slightly behind the prospectors come the surveyors. They study the new land, measure it, see whether it really complies with our best understanding of geology and suchlike. If it does - success! we have extended the validity of our current theories. If it doesn't - success! - we have found what might be a gold volcano hidden under something else, and we and the prospectors can dig a deep mine together to get at it. Examples include measuring high energy photons (just for you, Lily) or W bosons produced in the highest energy quark and gluons collisions ever seen.

There is a third type of result coming of course. These will come from part of the landscape where our understanding of the way things work means there MUST be a gold volcano (ok, a Higgs Boson) otherwise our theory is up the spout anyway. These searches are starting in earnest now at the LHC, and we will know the answer pretty soon, all being well.

A lot more landscape is about to open up. There is pressure get the present lot studied quickly. But in all this frontier land, no one wants to be a cowboy. It's got to be done right.

If we get it wrong, it won't destroy the world**. But it will waste time, send us down blind alleys, and, since the data continue to flow, truth will out in the end and mistakes will be found out, which can range from mildly embarrassing to career-endingly awful depending on the circumstances.

Forward now. But carefully...

By the way, I really like "favourite particle article". Must do more of those.

* Recently read Watership Down. Rabbits do that. Great book.

** Really, it won't. Please stop saying that. You know who I'm talking to. No, not you, YOU. That's right.