From Maxwell to Higgs and beyond: the story of the Higgs boson discovery

James Clerk Maxwell discovered the laws of electromagnetism in 1865 while at King's College London (KCL). Almost a century later, Peter Higgs, a KCL alumnus, postulated the existence of a particle now known as the Higgs boson. It is one of the cornerstones of the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes successfully all the visible matter in the Universe. The Higgs boson was the last missing piece to be discovered, on July 4th 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Join us for an evening of particle physics celebrating ten years since the Higgs boson discovery, where we will share the story leading up to this landmark achievement in the history of physics, review progress since the Higgs discovery, and look towards the future of our quest to understand the fundamental laws of the Universe.

Everyone is welcome to this public event!

[Due to unforeseen circumstances Kate Shaw will unfortunately be unable to participate]

Programme:

• 6:30pm - Introduction, Malcolm Fairbairn (Head of KCL Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology)

• A historical perspective on the Higgs, John Ellis
• The discovery of the Higgs, Kate Shaw
• Where do we go from here, Tevong You

• 7:30pm - Q&A
• 8:30pm - End

Speaker biographies:

• John Ellis is the Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King's College in London. After obtaining a PhD from Cambridge University and holding post-doctoral positions at SLAC and Caltech, from 1973 to 2011 he worked at CERN (Geneva), where he was Theory Division Leader for six years. His research interests focus on the phenomenological aspects of elementary particle physics and its connections with astrophysics, cosmology and gravity. Much of his work relates directly to experiment: interpreting results of searches for new particles and exploring the physics that could be done with future accelerators. A proposal he made in 1976 led to the discovery of the gluon in 1979, and he was one of the first to study how the Higgs boson could be produced and discovered. He has authored over a thousand scientific papers, with over ninety thousand citations in total. He has been active recently in efforts to understand the Higgs particle discovered at CERN, comparing the properties of this particle with the predictions of the Standard Model, and using effective field theory to understand the implications of the discovery for extensions of the Standard Model such as supersymmetry and other possible new physics such as dark matter. He is also now studying possible future particle accelerators and experiments to measure gravitational waves. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1985, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012 for his services to science and technology, in 2015 he was elected a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and a Foreign Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, and he has been awarded several honorary doctorates.

• Dr. Kate Shaw is an experimental particle physicist at the University of Sussex, UK, working on the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and the DUNE experiment at Fermilab. Her research is focused on the physics of the top quark which is the heaviest known fundamental particle. She has worked on studies relating to the Higgs Boson which was discovered in 2012 and facilitates fundamental particles to acquire mass, and has worked on luminosity calibration and determination at ATLAS. Shaw is passionate about physics outreach and communication, and diversity and inclusion. She was the coordinator for ATLAS outreach for 5 years, ATLAS Diversity and Inclusion contact for 2 years, and is the current lead on the ATLAS Open Data project which she initiated in 2014. Shaw works to bring ATLAS and DUNE science and technical skills to the public and high school students through various outreach and communication initiatives. In addition Dr Shaw is a staff scientist at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, where she has worked since 2010, and founded and coordinates the ICTP Physics Without Frontiers program which aims to promote physics in developing countries.

• Tevong You is a theoretical physicist at CERN. He obtained his PhD from King's College London and was a Research Fellow then College Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. His research pursues new probes and solutions to fundamental questions through particle physics and cosmology. He has been involved in early studies characterising the Higgs boson at the time of the discovery, proposed several theories using early universe cosmology to better understand the Higgs and other outstanding problems, and is currently leading efforts to make the physics case for exploring open questions beyond the Standard Model of particle physics at the CERN Future Circular Collider. He has been awarded a Branco Weiss Society in Science fellowship and will soon be joining the faculty at King's College London.