A Brief History for the Search and Discovery of the Higgs Particle: A Personal Perspective

TL;DR

This paper provides a personal historical overview of the search for the Higgs particle, highlighting key experiments from the 1980s to its discovery in 2012, and discusses its significance in particle physics.

Contribution

It offers a unique personal perspective on the experimental journey leading to the Higgs boson discovery, emphasizing historical context and experimental milestones.

Findings

Historical account of Higgs search from the 1980s to 2012

Details of experiments at LEP, Tevatron, and LHC

Discussion of the Higgs discovery's implications

Abstract

In 1964, a new particle was proposed by several groups to answer the question of where the masses of elementary particles come from; this particle is usually referred to as the Higgs particle or the Higgs boson. In July 2012, this Higgs particle was finally found experimentally, a feat accomplished by the ATLAS Collaboration and the CMS Collaboration using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is the purpose of this review to give my personal perspective on a brief history of the experimental search for this particle since the '80s and finally its discovery in 2012. Besides the early searches, those at the LEP collider at CERN, the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab, and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are described in some detail. This experimental discovery of the Higgs boson is often considered to be one of the most important advances in particle physics in the last half a century, and some of the possible implications are briefly discussed. This review is based on a talk presented by the author at the conference "OCPA8 International Conference on Physics Education and Frontier Physics", the 8th Joint Meeting of Chinese Physicists Worldwide, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, June 23-27, 2014.