See-saws, recycling and the W mass

Posted on 26/10/2022 by Jon Butterworth

Earlier this year the CDF collaboration published a measurement of the mass of the W boson which caused something of a stir. I even made it the topic of my slot at the rescheduled “Nine lessons for Curious People” in April. The interest arose principally because the measurement did not agree with the Standard Model of particle physics. It still doesn’t.

The Standard Model is very good as far as it goes, but it leaves important questions unanswered, so we are always on the lookout for a bigger, better theory with even more explanatory power. A very important method of “being on the look out” is to make precise measurements of things which the Standard Model predicts, and see if the predictions are right.

If they aren’t, that should be a big clue to the sought-after better theory.

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A Decade of the Higgs Boson and Beyond

Posted on 04/07/2022 by Jon Butterworth

Some bits and pieces on today’s festivities. An article at the Cosmic Shambles Network:

There’s also a live webcast from CERN.

And (along with several others) I talked to Harry Cliff for this excellent New Scientist article, and am extensively quoted.

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The importance of measurements

Posted on 01/07/2022 by Jon Butterworth

Having been pretty much bedridden with Covid for most of the week, I am now feeling much better. I still have those two lines on the thingy though, so today have added a cricket match to the list of missed things.

This is my first (known) bout of Covid since the start of the pandemic. Part of me was a little relieved to see the two lines appear on the lateral flow test. There have been a few times over the past years when I have felt rubbish but have come up with negative test results, and I had a nagging doubt I was somehow doing the test wrong.

Well, I wasn’t. Two very clear lines, consistently now for several days. So my comfort is that at least I have not been a bungling superspreader, falsely reassured by crap measurements.

Talking of measurements, he segued smoothly, there are two papers on the arXiv today I’d like to comment on.

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When is a Higgs not a Higgs?

Posted on 11/06/2022 by Jon Butterworth

Last Thursday, along with most of the STFC Technology and Accelerators Advisory Board (TAAB) I had a tour of RAL Space and RAL Technology Division. Lots of very cool stuff (and in some cases we are talking milli-Kelvin-and-below cool).

Since I intend to be analysing data from it for the next decade or more, it was satisfying to see a stave of the ATLAS Inner Tracking Detector upgrade, and peer through the window at the clean room where the detector is being assembled. Even though this is “my experiment” in one sense, this is the first time I’d seen this. The stave is an array of silicon detectors delicately bonded to their readout electronics. You can find more information here.

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