A collider in Russia accelerates particles in colliding beams (a collider from the word collide, in translation - to collide). It is needed in order to study the products of the stresses of these particles with each other, so that scientists give strong kinetic energy to elementary particles of matter. They also engage in collisions of these particles, directing them against each other.
History of creation
There are several types of colliders: ring (for example, LHC - Large Hadron Collider in the European CERN), linear (designed by ILC).
Theoretically, the idea of using beam collisions appeared a couple of decades ago. Wiederö Rolf, a physicist from Norway, received back in 1943 a patent in Germany for the idea of colliding beams. It was published only ten years later.
In 1956, Donald Kerst proposed the use of proton beam collisions in order to study particle physics. While Gerard O'Neill thought to use the storage rings in order to get intense beams.
Actively, work on the project to create a collider started simultaneously in Italy, the Soviet Union and the United States (Frascati, INP, SLAC). The first collider to be launched was the electron-positron AdA, led by Tushekawo Frascati.
Moreover, the first result was published only a year later (in 1966), in comparison with the results of observation of elastic electron scattering at VEP-1 (1965, USSR).
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Hadron Collider in Dubna
VEP-1 (colliding electron beams) is a machine that was created under the clear guidance of G.I. Budker. After some time, the beams were obtained in the accelerator of the United States. All three of these colliders were test ones; they served to demonstrate the possibility of studying particle physics on them.
The first hadron collider is ISR - the proton synchrotron, which was launched in 1971 by CERN. Its energy power was 32 GeV in the beam. It was the only working linear collider in the nineties.
After launch
A new acceleration complex is being created in Russia, on the basis of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. It is called NICA - Nuclotron based Ion Collider facility and is located in Dubna. The purpose of the construction is to study and discover new properties of the dense matter of baryons.
After the machine starts, scientists from the joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna near Moscow will be able to create a certain state of matter, which the Universe was in its very first moments after the Big Bang. This substance is called quark-gluon plasma (QGP).
The construction of the complex at a sensitive facility began in 2013, and the launch is planned in 2020.
Main tasks
Specially for the Science Day in Russia, JINR employees prepared materials for educational events intended for schoolchildren. The topic is called "NICA - The Universe in the Laboratory." A video sequence with the participation of Academician Grigory Vladimirovich Trubnikov will tell about future research that will be carried out at the Hadron Collider in Russia in collaboration with other scientists from around the world.
The most important task facing researchers in this area is to study the following areas:
- Properties and functions of close interactions of elementary components of a standard model of particle physics with each other, that is, the study of quarks and gluons.
- Finding signs of phase transition between QGP and hadron matter, as well as searching for previously unknown states of baryonic matter.
- Work with the basic properties of close interactions and symmetry of QGP.
Important equipment
The essence of the hadron collider in the NICA complex is to provide a large beam spectrum: from protons and deuterons, to beams, which consist of much heavier ions, such as the gold core.
Heavy ions will be accelerated to a state of energy up to 4.5 GeV / nucleon, and protons - up to twelve and a half. The collider heart in Russia is the Nuclotron accelerator, which has been operating since the ninety-third year of the last century, but has been significantly accelerated.
The NICA-collider has provided several ways of interaction. One in order to study how heavy ions collide with each other on an MPD detector, and the other to conduct experiments with polarized beams in an SPD setup.
Completion of construction
It was noted that scientists from countries such as the USA, Germany, France, Israel and, of course, Russia take part in the first experiment. Now at NICA, work is underway to install and bring into active working condition individual parts.
The building for the Hadron Collider will be completed in 2019, and the collider itself will be installed in 2020. In the same year, research will begin on the study of collisions of heavy ions. In full force, the entire device will work in 2023.
Collider in Russia is only one of six projects in our country that have been assigned the megascience class. In 2017, the government allocated almost four billion rubles for the construction of this machine. The cost of the basic construction of the machine was estimated by experts at twenty-seven and a half billion rubles.
New era
Vladimir Kekelidze, director of physicists at the JINR High Energy Laboratory, believes that the collider project in Russia will give the country the opportunity to rise to the highest positions in the field of high-energy physics.
Recently, traces of the “new physics” have been discovered, which are fixed by the Large Hadron Collider and they go beyond the Standard Model of our microworld. It was stated that the recently discovered "new physics" will not interfere with the work of the collider.
In an interview, Vladimir Kekelidze made it clear that these discoveries would not depreciate the work of NICA, since the project itself was created primarily to understand exactly how the very initial moments of the emergence of the Universe looked, as well as the conditions for research that exist in Dubna does not exist anywhere else in the world.
He said that JINR scientists are exploring new facets of science in which they are determined to take a leading position. That there is an era in which not only a new collider is created, but a new era in the development of high-energy physics for our country.
International project
According to the same director, work on NICA, where the hadron collider is located, will be international. Because research in high-energy physics in our time is carried out by entire scientific teams, which are composed of people from many different countries.
Employees from twenty-four countries of the world have already taken part in the work on this project at a sensitive facility. And the cost of this miracle is, according to approximate estimates, five hundred forty-five million dollars.
The new collider will also help scientists conduct research in the fields of creating new materials, materials science, radiobiology, electronics, beam therapy and medicine. In addition, all this will benefit the programs of Roscosmos, as well as the processing and disposal of radioactive waste and the creation of the latest sources of cryogen technology and energy that will be safe to use.
Higgs boson
The Higgs boson is the so-called Higgs quantum fields that appear with the need for physics, or rather, in its standard model of elementary particles, as a consequence of the Higgs mechanism of unpredictable violation of electroweak symmetry. Opening it was the completion of the standard model.
In the framework of the same model, he is responsible for the inertia of the mass of elementary particles - bosons. The Higgs field helps explain the appearance of an inert mass in particles, that is, carriers of weak interaction, as well as the absence of mass in the carrier - particles of strong interaction and electromagnetic (gluon and photon). The Higgs boson in its structure manifests itself as a scalar particle. Thus, it has a zero spin.
Opening fields
This boson was axiomatized back in 1964 by a physicist from Britain named Peter Higgs. The whole world learned about his discovery through reading his articles. And after almost fifty years of searching, that is, in 2012, on July 4, a particle was discovered that is suitable for this role. It was discovered as a result of studies at the LHC, and its mass is approximately 125-126 GeV / c².
To believe that this particular particle is the same Higgs boson is supported by fairly good reasons. In 2013, in March, various researchers from CERN reported that the particle that was found six months ago is actually the Higgs boson.
The updated model, which includes this particle, made it possible to construct a quantum renormalizable field theory. And a year later, in April, the CMS group reported that the decay latitude of the open Higgs boson is less than 22 MeV.
Particle properties
Just like any other particle from the table, the Higgs boson is subject to gravity. It has charges of color and electricity, as well as, as mentioned earlier, zero spin.
There are four main channels for the appearance of the Higgs boson:
- After the fusion of the two gluons occurs. He is the main.
- When merging pairs WW- or ZZ-.
- With the condition of accompanying the W- or Z-boson.
- With the top quarks present.
He decays into a pair of b-antiquarks and b-quarks, into two pairs of electron-positron and / or muon-antimuon with two neutrinos.
In 2017, at the very beginning of July, at a conference with the participation of EPS, ATLAS, HEP and CMS, it was reported that noticeable hints had finally begun to appear that the Higgs boson was decaying into a b-quark-antiquark pair.
Previously, it was unrealistic to see such things with our own eyes because of the difficulties in separating the birth of the same quarks in a different way from processes in the background. The standard physical model suggests that such a decay is the most frequent, that is, in more than half the cases. In October 2017, a reliable observation of the decay signal opened. Such a statement was made by CMS and ATLAS in their published articles.
Mass consciousness
The particle discovered by Higgs is so important that Leon Lederman (Nobel laureate) in the title of his book called it a particle of God. Although Leon Lederman himself in his original version proposed the “particle of the Devil”, the editors rejected his proposal.
In the media, this frivolous name is used quite widely. Although many scientists do not approve of this. They believe that the name "champagne bottle boson" would be much more successful, since the potential of the Higgs field resembles the bottom of this very bottle, and opening it will definitely lead to the complete draining of many such bottles.