A Zeptospace Odyssey. A Journey Into The Physics Of The Lhc

A Zeptospace Odyssey This page intentionally left blank A Zeptospace Odyssey  A Journey into the Physics of the LHC Gian Francesco Giudice CERN, Department of Theoretical Physics Geneva, Switzerland 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Gian Francesco Giudice 2010 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 978–0–19–958191–7 (Hbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2  Contents 1. Prologue 1 PART ONE: A MATTER OF PARTICLES 2. Dissecting Matter 3. Forces of Nature 4. Sublime Marvel 9 29 51 PART TWO: THE STARSHIP OF ZEPTOSPACE 5. Stairway to Heaven 6. The Lord of the Rings 7. Telescopes Aimed at Zeptospace 79 95 119 PART THREE: MISSIONS IN ZEPTOSPACE 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Breaking Symmetries Dealing with Naturalness Supersymmetry From Extra Dimensions to New Forces Exploring the Universe With a Microscope Epilogue Acknowledgements Glossary Index 145 177 187 203 217 241 247 249 257 This page intentionally left blank  1 Prologue We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Thomas Stearns Eliot1 The control room of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is packed full of people. Everyone’s eyes are fixed on the monitor screen hanging on the wall, which now is showing only a grey background. The last absorber block has already been removed, and so the protons will not find any obstacle to their circular trajectory around the 27-kilometre long underground tunnel. It is 10.28 a.m. on 10 September 2008. We are at CERN, the European research laboratory for particle physics, stretched across the border between France and Switzerland, near Geneva. Lyn Evans, the director of the LHC project, like a magician ready to perform his most astonishing trick, recites the magic formula in French, but without hiding his lilting Welsh intonation: “Trois, deux, un . . . . . . faisceau!” At that very moment, two white spots appear for an instant on the screen. Everyone bursts into applause. The images from the control room are broadcast live into the main auditorium, wher