Saturday 15 March 2025
Scientists have been searching for a new type of particle that could help us understand more about the universe. This particle, called an axion-like particle (ALP), is thought to be very light and interact weakly with other particles.
The search for ALPs has been ongoing for decades, but it’s only recently that scientists have started to use powerful colliders like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to look for them. The LHC is a massive particle accelerator located in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists smash protons together at incredibly high speeds to create new particles.
One of the ways scientists search for ALPs is by looking for signs of their presence in the collisions that occur at the LHC. They do this by analyzing the debris left behind after the collisions and looking for patterns that could indicate the presence of an ALP.
Recently, a team of scientists used data from the LHC to look for evidence of ALPs produced in top-quark pair events. Top quarks are heavy particles that are similar to protons but have different properties. The scientists looked for signs of ALPs decaying into pairs of muons, which are subatomic particles that are similar to electrons but have a slightly larger mass.
After analyzing the data, the scientists found some interesting results. They discovered that there was a small excess of events where two muons were produced in the collision debris, which could be evidence of ALPs. The excess was not statistically significant on its own, but it combined with previous results from other searches for ALPs, it became more promising.
The discovery of ALPs would be a major breakthrough in particle physics and could help us understand more about the universe. It could also open up new areas of research and potentially lead to new technologies.
One of the ways scientists plan to continue searching for ALPs is by using new detectors at the LHC that are designed specifically to look for these particles. The new detectors will be able to detect even smaller signals than before, which should allow them to find evidence of ALPs if they exist.
In addition to searching for ALPs directly at the LHC, scientists are also looking for indirect signs of their presence. They do this by analyzing data from other experiments and observations that could be related to ALPs.
For example, scientists have looked at data from the observation of cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles that bombard the Earth from space.
Cite this article: “The Search for Axion-Like Particles”, The Science Archive, 2025.
Particle Physics, Axion-Like Particle, Large Hadron Collider, Lhc, Top Quarks, Muons, Particle Accelerator, Cosmic Rays, Detector, Universe.
