Nature's Blueprint. Supersymmetry And The Search For A Unified Theory Of Matter And Force

Nature’s Blueprint Supersymmetry and the Search for a Unified Theory of Matter and Force DA N H O O P E R Contents Acknowledgments v 1 1 Discovery! 2 The Birth of a New Science 3 Dirac’s Symmetry 4 From Simplicity to Chaos . . . and Back Again 5 The World as We Know It 6 The Birth of Supersymmetry 7 Unity in All Things 8 The Hunt Begins 9 Bang! 14 36 82 105 125 142 155 174 10 The Machine 11 In Search of Beauty and Truth 192 The LHC Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story! Index 53 219 About the Author Other Books by Dan Hooper Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 201 Acknowledgments I would like to thank all of those who provided me with the suggestions, assistance, encouragment, and inspiration that made this book possible. In particular, I owe special thanks to Antony Harwood, T. J. Kelleher, Cheryl Potts, and Pasquale Serpico. Josh Friess, in contrast, contributed absolutely nothing to this project. —Dan Hooper The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. —Marcel Proust 1 Discovery! T o the curious, nothing is more exciting than discovery. Nothing is more powerful, and nothing is more awe inspiring. There is something truly and profoundly irresistible about the act of learning secrets—in knowing what had once been hidden. Scientists, and science itself, are driven by this fascination. The secrets that science seeks are those belonging to nature. Nature presents us with the grandest of all puzzles. With every new advance or insight, we get a further glimpse into the inner workings of our world—the very blueprint of nature. Today, we are preparing to sneak a deeper and more detailed glimpse at this blueprint. We are poised upon the very edge of discovery. For more than thirty years, physicists have been investigating a theory known as supersymmetry. Supersymmetry is a framework—a principle, really—that describes and explains the relationship between two of the most fundamental concepts in physics: matter and 2 Nature’s Blueprint force. This is a theory possessing the highest degree of mathematical beauty and elegance. On a more practical note, the presence of supersymmetry also has the ability to solve many of the long-standing problems of particle physics. To date, however, experimental confirmation that supersymmetry actually exists has remained elusive. If or when evidence for supersymmetry is finally observed, it will be a monumental, era-defining moment in the history of science, on par with the greatest discoveries of Einstein, Newton, and Galileo. It will be the discovery of a lifetime. The theory of supersymmetry predicts that many unseen kinds of matter must exist. This matter takes the form of particles called superpartners. Despite the efforts of many hundreds of physicists conducting experiments in search of these particles, no superpartners have ever been observed or detected. They remain hidden, at least for the time being. This has had little effect in deterring the theoretical physicists who passionately expect nature to be formulated in this way—to be supersymmetric. To many of these scientists, the ideas behind supersymmetry are simply too beautiful and too elegant not to be part of our universe. They solve too many problems and fit into our world too naturally. To these true believers, the superpartner particles simply must exist. That they remain hidden is merely a standing challenge to future physicists and the experiments they conduct. Supersymmetry may not remain hidden from