88
R. N. Mohapatra
they do not, in the process unraveling the mysteries is: why does it work so well?
Some of the “why”s that keep the field active and optimistic are for example:
• Why is the Higgs mass what it is, and not much larger or smaller? There have
been extensively discussed ideas to solve this problem; they involve novel
ideas known as supersymmetry, which is a symmetry between fermions and
bosons [85]. Another class of novel ideas use the possibility that there may
be extra space dimensions in nature invisible to us [12].
• Why do the neutrinos which are predicted in the standard model to have
no weight indeed have weight, confirmed in 1998, as discussed below?
• Why are the quark and lepton masses the way they are? Is there a higher
level theory that unifies quarks and leptons as well as forces?
• Why is there dark matter in the universe, whose story we mention in brief
in the later part of the book?
• Why does the universe suddenly appear to be accelerating, the theoretical
language for this being “why is there a cosmological constant that would
have the same effect?”
12.1 Future Colliders and New Physics
There are plans for building even more energetic beams of electrons and
protons to continue this search for new physics. The maximum energy at the
LHC is 14 TeV (fourteen trillion times the mass of the proton). The newer
colliders plan to extend this energy to 27 TeV and in future to 100 TeV, using
circular tunnels of circumferences as big as 100 km. To accelerate the protons
and keep it focused in its path, much stronger magnets are needed. The
magnets have to have the strength of as much as 80,000 times the magnetic
field of the Earth (8.3 T in physics language). These projects are called FCChh, i.e. Future Circular Colliders using hadron beams. They will use magnets
with roughly double the strength of the LHC magnets. Getting such high
field strengths for magnets is one of the engineering challenges that has to be
overcome.
There are also plans for building circular electron–positron colliders at
higher energies. Currently being seriously discussed is an International Linear
Collider with international collaboration, with Japan taking the lead. Some
of these machines once operative can produce as many as ten billion Higgs
bosons, allowing more in depth study of Higgs boson properties than LHC
can provide. LHC has so far produced ten million Higgs bosons. So we could
have thousand times the number of Higgs bosons in future colliders. That
R. N. Mohapatra
they do not, in the process unraveling the mysteries is: why does it work so well?
Some of the “why”s that keep the field active and optimistic are for example:
• Why is the Higgs mass what it is, and not much larger or smaller? There have
been extensively discussed ideas to solve this problem; they involve novel
ideas known as supersymmetry, which is a symmetry between fermions and
bosons [85]. Another class of novel ideas use the possibility that there may
be extra space dimensions in nature invisible to us [12].
• Why do the neutrinos which are predicted in the standard model to have
no weight indeed have weight, confirmed in 1998, as discussed below?
• Why are the quark and lepton masses the way they are? Is there a higher
level theory that unifies quarks and leptons as well as forces?
• Why is there dark matter in the universe, whose story we mention in brief
in the later part of the book?
• Why does the universe suddenly appear to be accelerating, the theoretical
language for this being “why is there a cosmological constant that would
have the same effect?”
12.1 Future Colliders and New Physics
There are plans for building even more energetic beams of electrons and
protons to continue this search for new physics. The maximum energy at the
LHC is 14 TeV (fourteen trillion times the mass of the proton). The newer
colliders plan to extend this energy to 27 TeV and in future to 100 TeV, using
circular tunnels of circumferences as big as 100 km. To accelerate the protons
and keep it focused in its path, much stronger magnets are needed. The
magnets have to have the strength of as much as 80,000 times the magnetic
field of the Earth (8.3 T in physics language). These projects are called FCChh, i.e. Future Circular Colliders using hadron beams. They will use magnets
with roughly double the strength of the LHC magnets. Getting such high
field strengths for magnets is one of the engineering challenges that has to be
overcome.
There are also plans for building circular electron–positron colliders at
higher energies. Currently being seriously discussed is an International Linear
Collider with international collaboration, with Japan taking the lead. Some
of these machines once operative can produce as many as ten billion Higgs
bosons, allowing more in depth study of Higgs boson properties than LHC
can provide. LHC has so far produced ten million Higgs bosons. So we could
have thousand times the number of Higgs bosons in future colliders. That
