ATLAS Higgs-Physics

The Higgs boson is unique within the Standard Model of particle physics. It interacts with all particles that have mass, and the strength of this interaction is proportional to the particle’s mass. This means heavier particles interact more strongly with the Higgs boson than lighter ones. This makes it the only known fundamental interaction that is not quantized, but instead depends directly on mass. This distinctive feature may also provide a key to uncovering unknown physics effects and new heavy particles that interact with the Higgs boson due to the fact they possess mass but do not participate in interactions via other forces, e.g. potential dark matter particles. For this reason, precise measurements of the Higgs boson’s properties and its interactions are of great scientific interest.

The Higgs boson can be produced under laboratory conditions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, and studied by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, which first discovered the Higgs boson in 2012.

At Siegen, our research focuses on measuring the interactions between the Higgs boson and the top, bottom, and charm quarks. In addition, we test theories beyond the Standard Model that predict new processes involving the Higgs boson.