TSU scientists became co-authors of the ATLAS discovery to measure the decay of the Higgs boson into b quarks. It is a fundamental confirmation of the Standard Model of Elementary Particles and one of the most significant achievements of CERN since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. The TSU research team has been participating in the ATLAS pilot program since 2015.

The Higgs boson is an elementary particle, which was theoretically predicted in 1964, its existence was confirmed experimentally only in 2012. As part of the experiment, two protons collided at near-light speed, they decayed into many particles, among which they looked for the Higgs boson. It, in turn, with different probabilities, splits into different sets of particles.

After six years of observations, scientists from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations first recorded the decay of the Higgs boson into bottom quarks (b quarks). The staff of the TSU laboratory contributed to the discovery - they helped collect data, which were subsequently were analyzed and allowed to fix the decay.

- The Higgs decay was measured (in other words, how often it decays) into b quarks at 67.8% with a measurement error of 12.7%, - said Dmitry Tsybyshev, Professor at Stony Brook University, head of a TSU megagrant. - The next task is to reduce the measurement error as much as possible. According to our calculations, we will be able to reduce it to 5%.