PlanetPhysics/High Energy Physics
This is a contributed topic on high energy physics .
High energy physics and Particle accelerators[edit | edit source]
Because high energies are usually obtained by researchers in large particle accelerators this important, expensive and intensive branch of physics is often called particle physics . Some high energy particles whose origin is in outer space are however also detected at high altitudes on Earth or by detectors mounted on satellites.
The Standard Model (SUSY)[edit | edit source]
The current model employed by branches of physics other than Gravitation is summarized by `The Standard Model' which can be described as the current classification of particles based only on strong, electromagnetic and electroweak interactions, mediated by field particles called gauge bosons .
Gauge bosons[edit | edit source]
The gauge bosons corresponding to the above three types of interactions are:
- gluons for the strong interactions
- photons for electromagnetic interactions
- and and Z bosons for the electroweak interactions.
Major facilities for high energy physics[edit | edit source]
In the USA:[edit | edit source]
- Brookhaven National Laboratory, located on Long Island; this is a Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider that collides heavy ions such as gold ions with polarized protons.
- The "Tevatron" at Fermilab, located near Chicago, USA; this is a proton--antiproton collider, at present the second highest energy particle collider in the world.
- SLAC, located near Berkeley and Palo Alto, USA, an electron--positron
collider and storage ring.
In the European Union:[edit | edit source]
- CERN, located on the French-Swiss border near Geneva, currently operating
the world's higherst energy particle acccelerator--the large hadron collider (LHC)
- SPS at CERN--the "Super Proton Synchrotron"-precursor of LHC
- DESY, located in Hamburg, Germany, with the high energy HERA electron (or positron)-- proton collider.
- ISIS-- the brightest neutron spallation source at the Harwell reactor, near Oxford, in U.K.
In Japan:[edit | edit source]
KEK, located in Tsukuba, Japan, is the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization of Japan.
In Russia:[edit | edit source]
Budker Institute of nuclear physics at Novosibirsk.