A tutorial on the road to discovery

Divide into groups. Each group will try to answer one question in this activity. 

Group questions:

1. What are the Higgs field and the Higgs boson?
2. Why did theorist Peter Higgs and his colleagues propose this new boson?
3. What were some of the pre-LHC efforts to discover the Higgs boson at CERN?
4. What were some of the pre-LHC efforts to discover the Higgs boson at Fermilab?
5. How was the Higgs finally discovered?
6. What do we now know about the Higgs boson since it was discovered?
7. What do we still want to learn about the Higgs boson?
8. We call it the Higgs - but there were other physicists involved. Who were they? 

Document Resources:

Some of these resources are at a professional level. Please focus on what you learn and understand from them rather than on parts that are too technical or abstract. Of course, you are encouraged to ask questions.

• Wikipedia, Higgs Mechanism - Theoretical Issues - Theoretical need for the Higgs and Simple explanation of the theory, from its origins in superconductivity
• CERN, A Phenomenological Profile of the Higgs Boson, Ellis, Gaillard, and Nanopoulos, 30 October 1975
• CERN Courier, LEP pursues Higgs boson and greater W precision, 2 November 1999
• CERN Courier, LEP hints at Higgs effect, 21 September 2000
• CERN Bulletin, Higgs10: The dramatic last year of CERN’s flagship LEP collider, 9 June 2022
• Physikalisches Institut, Heidelberg, Searches for Higgs Bosons, October 2005
• Fermilab Inquiring Minds (Q&A), April 2014 - How does the Higgs boson generate the masses for all other particles? Is it the carrier of a force?
• Fermilab News, Tevatron Experiments Double-Team Higgs Boson, 4 August 2008
• Physics Letters B, Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, 17 September 2012
• Physics Letters B, Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at
  the LHC, 17 September 2012
• Scholarpedia, The Higgs Boson Discovery
• Nature, Happy birthday Higgs boson! What we do and don't know about the particle 
• Symmetry, Q&A: What more can we learn about the Higgs?
• APS News, The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics
• Washington Post, Nobel committee’s ‘Rule of Three’ means some Higgs boson scientists were left out

Video Resources:

• Don Lincoln, What is a Higgs Boson?, 7 July 2011
• Link TV, The Moment: CERN Scientist Announces Higgs Boson 'God Particle' Discovery, 4 July 2012
• Muon Ray, Higgs Boson Discovery announcement by Peter Higgs, 4 July 2012
• Minute Physics, The Higgs Boson, Part I, 5 July 2012
• PHD Comics, The Higgs Boson Explained, 30 July 2012
• Don Lincoln, Higgs Boson 2016, 16 November 2016