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A supercollider glimpses a gathering of three particles never seen together before

Data from billions of proton collisions reveal that subatomic particles called W+ and W− bosons keep company with a photon.
Part of the compact muon solenoid detector at CERN

The CMS detector (component pictured) at the Large Hadron Collider was used to observe a triplet comprising three elementary particles. Credit: David Parker/SPL

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, have yielded the simultaneous appearance of three force-carrying elementary particles that had never been seen together before1: two particles called W bosons of opposite electric charges, W+ and W−, and a photon, γ.

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Nature 627, 707 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00764-8

References

  1. The CMS Collaboration. Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 121901 (2024).

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