PlanetPhysics/High Energy Physics

This is a contributed topic on high energy physics .

High energy physics and Particle accelerators

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 $\gamma$ 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)

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

The gauge bosons corresponding to the above three types of interactions are:

• gluons for the strong interactions
• photons for electromagnetic interactions
• $W^{-}$ and $W^{+}$ and Z bosons for the electroweak interactions.

Major facilities for high energy physics

In the USA:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. SLAC, located near Berkeley and Palo Alto, USA, an electron--positron

collider and storage ring.

In the European Union:

1. CERN, located on the French-Swiss border near Geneva, currently operating

the world's higherst energy particle acccelerator--the large hadron collider (LHC)

1. SPS at CERN--the "Super Proton Synchrotron"-precursor of LHC
2. DESY, located in Hamburg, Germany, with the high energy HERA electron (or positron)-- proton collider.
3. ISIS-- the brightest neutron spallation source at the Harwell reactor, near Oxford, in U.K.

In Japan:

KEK, located in Tsukuba, Japan, is the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization of Japan.

In Russia:

Budker Institute of nuclear physics at Novosibirsk.