New Physics and Chemistry Discovered at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider - Research Paper Example

New Physics and Chemistry Discovered at the CERN's Large Hadron Collider Objectives: (i) To create all the conditions necessary for a possible Big Bang (ii) To identify Higg’s Bosons and mimic quark confinement in matter, so that the acquiring of mass by the physical particles through the interaction of quantum fields (called Higg’s field) gets explained (iii) To couple the theory of Quantum Mechanics with Einstein’s theory of General Relativity so that a Grand Unified Theory is developed to understand Quantum Gravity, and hence Dark Matter, Supersymmetry (SUSY), Extra-dimensions as well as other related high energy cosmological phenomena. Experimental Set-up: There are as many as six (06) different set-ups in the LHC. They may be listed as— 1. ALICE: A Large Ion Collider Experiment involves some of the hottest collisions being performed within the collider, in the hopes of breaking the bonds between quarks and gluons. If this occurs, it will produce a material known as quark-gluon plasma, which probably made up the universe in the time following the Big Bang. Physicists are interested in this material because the expansion and cooling of the material would likely show how the particles that exist today arose out of the conditions following the Big Bang (“CERN - LHC Experiments: ALICE”) 2. ATLAS: A Toroidal LHC Apparatus, records measurements for the results of particle collisions. It tracks what particles are created and destroyed in a given collision, and the path of travel and energy for those particles (“CERN - LHC Experiments: ATLAS”). They are both considered general-purpose detectors. The experiments being performed using them focus on the search for the Higgs boson and the substance known as dark matter (“CERN - LHC Experiments: ATLAS”; “CERN - LHC Experiments: CMS”). Both pieces of equipment are needed in order to study the Higgs boson due to its extremely elusive nature. Mathematical and physical proof a a “light” Higgs boson would require the results of the experiments to agree on both pieces of equipment, and for each experiment to have consistent results across several experimental states each very different from one another (Froidevaux & Sphicas). 3. CMS: Compact Muon Solenoid, has the same research goals as ATLAS, but it has different technical specifications to achieve those goals, especially with regard to the design of the magnet system within the equipment (“CERN - LHC Experiments: CMS”). The CMS has been designed to detect the presence of “missing” energy, which could indicate the presence of stable but weakly-interacting particles, such as energetic neutrinos. This missing energy occurs when the particle moves in the same direction as the beam pipe and so cannot be detected; the use of the CMS helps to cover this gap and provide a more complete picture of the collision event (Pi et al. 2011) 4. LHCb: Large Hadron Collider beauty is expected to help us understand why the universe appears to be composed almost entirely of matter, but no antimatter. It specializes in investigating the slight differences between matter and antimatter by studying a type of particle called the 'beauty quark', or 'b quark'.” (“CERN - The LHC Experiments: LHCb”) 5. TOTEM: TOTal Elastic and diffractive cross section Measurement device is included in the experimental set-up to study the physics of the elementary particles that is always hidden to the general-purpose experiments carried in such an accelerator. It is of immense importance to measure the size of the proton and also calculate accurately the LHC's luminosity, so that the results may be utilized for calibration of the whole set-up (“CERN - LHC Experiments: TOTEM”) 6. LHCf: Large Hadron Collider forward tries to simulate Cosmic Rays, which are the naturally occurring charged particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere, colliding with our atmosphere and resulting in stream of particles on Earth’s surface. This, it is believed, would be able to mimic the creation of lithium and beryllium (“CERN - The LHC Experiments: LHCf”). Theory: The Large Hadron Collider experiment is rightly named as Big Bang Machine, as it is designed with the goal of reproducing mini Big Bangs under controlled conditions. If we assume that the Present Epoch for this particular creation started with the event Big Bang at t=0, then the series of significant events occurred as per the following schedule— Time from the Big Bang (t in Sec) Temperature (T in K) Activity 10-44 1032 Super Gravity 10-44 - 10-35 1028 GUT era 10-35 - 10-22 1027 Inflationary era 10-22 - 10-10 1015 Radiation era 10-10 - 10-4 1014 – 1012 Heavy Particle era 10-22 - 10 1012 Lepton era 10 - 300 1012 – 1010 Nucleosynthesis The LHC is expected to reach the temperature of the order of 1011 K during the first phase of collisions and hence it is believed that the conditions will be appropriate for the process of nucleosynthesis to set in. Before discussing the initial results reported so far, let us understand both the physics and the chemistry of this fascinating as well as quite significant phenomenon as far as formation of the solar system and existence of life is concerned. Step1: Just after less than one second of the Big Bang, it is believed that the neutron:proton ratio (n:p) in the universe got thermally stabilized. In order to attain thermal equilibrium, it is essential that the reactions producing them after interactions with electrons and positrons in the hot dense surrounding medium maintained a slower rate than the expansion rate of the universe, so that the corresponding mass difference between the neutron and proton was just adequate enough to stop the cause of their production. About one second after the Big Bang, the temperature was slightly less than the neutron-proton mass difference, and, as a result, these weak reactions shown below was slower than the expansion rate of the Universe—establishing the much needed thermal equilibrium and “freezing” the neutron:proton ratio at about 1:6 (Weiss 2006). The reactions that lead to this equilibrium are given as Step 2: The universe cools off and after 1 second, the only reaction that changes the number of neutrons happened to be neutron decay, as described in the equation below. Since the half-life of a neutron is 615 seconds, about half of the neutrons existing during the previous step (thermal equilibrium), would have decayed down to form new protons-electron pairs. Without any other reactions taking place to preserve neutrons within stable nuclei, the universe would have been full of pure hydrogen. Here is the governing reaction during this phase of creation Step 3: The reaction that comes handy in preserving the neutrons was that leading to the formation of the deuteron nuclei. The deuteron, as we know, is the nucleus of deuterium, which is the heavy form of hydrogen (H2). This reaction being exothermic with an energy difference of 2.2 MeV, slows down the deuteron formation as photons were almost a billion times more numerous than the existing protons. The reaction would not have proceeded until the temperature of the sink—the universe—fell down to not less than 1 billion Kelvin or kT = 0.1 MeV (‘k’ being Boltzmann’s constant). This was possible about 100 seconds after the Big Bang, the neutron:proton ratio at that time was about 1:7. The reaction for the deuteron formation may be expressed as Step 4: As the temperature got slipped down further, formation of heavier and more stable nuclei was in the agenda next. Thus, as the deuteron formation had occurred, it was time to proceed further to make the much stable helium nuclei. Light helium (He3) as well as normal helium (He4) was there in the output, along with the radioactive form of hydrogen (H3), as a result of the possible photoreactions listed below. The helium nucleus being 28 MeV more bound than the deuterons, and the temperature by that time got fallen to the extent of kT = 0.1 MeV, the stage was set just right for these reactions to go only in one way Step 5: In order to enhance the formation of He further, looking into the existing energy budget and the prevailing conditions during that time, the deuterons played a major role as building bricks for matter. The reactions producing helium usually go faster since they do not involve the relatively slow process of photon emission, as in the previous step Step 6: The temperature, finally, climbed down to so low that the electrostatic repulsions of the deuterons became effective by that time-- causing the reaction to stop, eventually. This, further lead to a quite small value for the deuteron:proton ratio when the reactions got stopped. It is known today that this ratio, in fact, is inversely proportional to the total density in protons and neutrons. As a result, almost all the neutrons in the universe at that time ended up forming normal helium nuclei. When the neutron:proton ratio was set as 1:7 at the time of deuteron formation, 25% of the total mass existed as helium during that significant phase of the Present Epoch. The net outcome may be depicted by the following reaction It was Gamow, Alpher and Herman (Alpher et al 2001) who first had proposed that the hot Big Bang was the machine to produce all of the elements required for building the visible matter today in the universe. But, as we have observed from the discussion so far, the lack of stable nuclei with atomic weights of 5 or 8 restricted the Big Bang to producing only hydrogen and helium in the hot gluon-plasma soup, which was the primordial fluid medium produced just after the t=0 (Big Bang) event. Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle, known as BBFH, (Burbidge et al 1957) could later show from their thorough analysis that the nucleosynthesis processes that occur in stars, where density as well as time scales are higher and longer, paves the way for formation of heavier elements. The “triple-alpha process” (He+He+He -> C) leading the way for carbon production in star interiors, requires a robust flow of He to sustain. But BBFH could not give the flow-chart for production of enough helium. Today, it is well established that both of these processes-- most of the He getting produced during the Big Bang, and carbon and everything heavier getting generated in stars through further nucleosynthesis— are true. Whereas, most of the lithium and beryllium is caused by cosmic ray collisions, breaking up some of the carbon nuclei produced in stars. If we peep into the universe just before this phase, temperature at around 1012 K, leptons were there in the primordial medium—the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Hadrons (both Baryons and Hyperons) were formed as the radiation substantiated as a result of temperature falling down non-linearly, as a result of expansion. Thus, it is believed, that as the present experiment reach a stage where more and more collisions take place, causing further escalation of temperature, it would be possible to proceed much nearer to the initial event—the Big Bang. Today, the existing laws of Physics fail to couple Gravity and Quantum Mechanics, which would have resulted in better understanding of the state of affairs during the GUT era, at around 10-44 - 10-35 sec after the Big Bang. This, it is expected by the Particle Physicists today, would eventually lead to identifying “gravitons”. Several theories, including many of the String Theories, such as the now famous “m-theory” as described by Stephen Hawking, may be found in the literature, trying to explain Quantum Gravity (Hawking & Mlodinow 2010)—with the ultimate objective of devising a way for the bosons (which are the quantum particles following Bose-Einstein’s statistics, violating Pauli’s exclusion principle when they club together to form matter) to acquire mass as the Higg’s fields interact—a state as early as around 10-44 sec, or much beyond. Results so far: Though it is still quite early to enumerate the results following from an experiment involving more than 30,000 researchers across the globe for last several years, we can make a list of prominent outcomes so far. These researchers from all over the world were thrilled on Nov. 20, 2009, when the collider got back to its form once again and sent protons racing through its tunnel, after the initial set-back on Sept 10, 2008, when the electrical connections got broke down when the 17 mile underground collider had to bear the first impact. The colossal machine recorded its first proton-proton collisions just after three days. What more, it set a new world record when it could accelerate two beams of protons to a total energy of 2.36 trillion electron volts—a gigantic step in man’s endeavor to understand matter and creation of this universe (Froidevaux et al 2011). Amongst all the reported results so far, the list below gives a record of the most significant ones: (i) The very early universe was in the state of a very very hot liquid of minimal viscosity (ideal fluid), besides being highly dense. Many of the theoretical particle physics models, describing the primordial matter called Quark-Gluon Plasma (Hwa et al 2010), created during the first few microseconds, as gas get abolished now as a result of new findings obtained from the first 284 reported collisions of lead nuclei in the ALICE set-up (ii) Much more sub-atomic particles than previously predicted theoretical values have been reported, radiating out enormous amount of energy as the quark-gluon plasma cools off (Ho et al 2011) (iii) By producing energy of the order of 7 TeV during the lead nuclei collision, new vistas of applications in fields such as Medical Imaging, Microelectronics, Information Technology and Data Base Management System are opened (iv) ATLAS results has thrown light into the Jet Quenching phenomena which is the formation of a characteristic signal from one of the jets produced during the heavy ion collision (the lead nuclei here), as a result of the interaction of the jet with the dense plasma at exceedingly high temperature. It is reported from the analysis of the available data so far that there exists significant imbalance of energy of one of the jets of the pair produced, pointing towards the expected absorption of the jet by the dense medium (Lecoq 2011)—agreeing with the many of the theoretical models. What is interesting about this agreement of predictions to reality is that this allows physicists to calibrate the LHC against what is already known to be true, and therefore be able to trust the results they receive when the results of their experiments do not match those provided by a theory. It even allows them to research into areas currently beyond the theories that exist, and to create new models that could eventually lead to the coveted “Theory of Everything” (or GUT) which would include gravity (v) The initial results from the analysis of the distributed data obtained from the experiment are giving some interesting results probing the theoretically predicted nucleosynthesis outcomes; but none of them are yet published in refereed research journals—justifying the need for more calibrations, calculations, and fittings. Discussion & Conclusion: One of the major challenges of this unprecedented experiment is the data capture and data analysis. It is expected that during the process of lead nuclei collision, data will need to be recorded in the disk at a rate of 1.2 GBytes per second. This job is presently assigned to a well distributed GRID spread over the globe. Further, this enormous project would definitely help developing peripheral areas of high-end research in fields such as, microelectronics, IT, and medical imaging—apart from other areas of science, chemistry and biology, to mention particularly. Works Cited Achim Weiss. "Big Bang Nucleosynthesis: Cooking up the first light elements", Einstein Online 2 (2006): 1017. Alpher, R. A. and R. Herman. Genesis of the Big Bang (1st ed.). Oxford University Press, 2001. Brandenberger, R. “Alternatives to cosmological inflation”, Physics Today. 61 (3) (2008): 44. Burbidge, E. M., G. R. Burbidge, W. A. Fowler, and F. Hoyle, "Synthesis of the elements in stars", Reviews of Modern Physics 29 (2) (1957): 547. “First Beam for Large Hadron Collider”, Brookhaven National Laboratory press release, September 10, 2008. Hartnett, J., and A. Williams. “Dismantling the Big Bang”, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2005. Hawking S., Mlodinow L. The Grand Design, Bantam; 1st Edition Ed, September 7, 2010. Froidevaux, Daniel, and Paris Sphicas. “General-Purpose Detectors for the Large Hadron Collider.” Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 56.1 (2006) : 375-440. 4 Apr 2011. Ho, Chiu Man, and Thomas J Weiler. “Causality-Violating Higgs Singlets at the LHC.” 1103.1373 (2011) : n. pag. 4 Apr 2011. Hwa, Rudolph C., and Xin-Nian Wang. Quark-Gluon Plasma 4. World Scientific, 2010. Print. Lecoq, P. “Ten years of lead tungstate development.” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 537.1-2 (2005) : 15-21. 4 Apr 2011. Pi, H. et al. “Measurement of missing transverse energy with the CMS detector at the LHC.” The European Physical Journal C 46.S1 (2006) : 45-56. 10 Apr 2011. Internet Resources “CERN - LHC Experiments: ALICE.” 4 Apr 2011. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/ALICE-en.html “CERN - LHC Experiments: ATLAS.” 4 Apr 2011. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/ATLAS-en.html “CERN - LHC Experiments: CMS.” 4 Apr 2011. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/CMS-en.html “CERN - The LHC Experiments: LHCb.” 4 Apr 2011. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/LHCb-en.html “CERN - LHC Experiments: TOTEM.” 4 Apr 2011. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/TOTEM-en.html “CERN - The LHC Experiments: LHCf.” 4 Apr 2011. http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/LHCf-en.html Read More