The ATLAS research collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider — including researchers from the Department of Physics in the Faculty of Arts & Science — has been awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
The prize, popularly known as the Oscars of Science, recognizes researchers who have made profound contributions to human knowledge; it is open to all physicists – theoretical, mathematical, experimental – “working on the deepest mysteries of the universe.”
The 2025 prize is in recognition of the ATLAS collaboration’s detailed measurements of the Higgs boson. The fundamental particle, first detected in 2012, is associated with the Higgs field which gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks.
The ATLAS experiment has confirmed the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation, the discovery of new strongly interacting particles, the study of rare processes and matter-antimatter asymmetry, and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and most extreme conditions.
The prize is being awarded to the thousands of researchers from more than 70 countries who are co-authors of publications based on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Run-2 data released between 2015 and July 15, 2024, representing four experimental collaborations: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. The four experiments are recognized for testing the modern theory of particle physics – the Standard Model – and other theories describing physics that might lie beyond it to high precision.
“This prize recognizes a 20-year effort to construct the Large Hadron Collider and the ATLAS and CMS experiments, as well as ten years of data collection and analysis,” says Pekka Sinervo, a professor of high-energy particle physics in the department and a member of ATLAS.
“The U of T team has had a key role in the ATLAS work. They have taken lead roles in uncovering the properties of the still mysterious Higgs boson,” he says.
U of T has been at the forefront of ATLAS research since the creation of the collaboration in the early 90s, contributing to the construction and operation of the forward calorimeter, which has played a central role in the Higgs boson discovery and subsequent measurements.
U of T’s team is deeply involved in preparing ATLAS for its next chapter. They are leading the development of a new all-silicon inner tracker (ITK) for the High-Luminosity LHC, which will increase collision rates tenfold when it begins operation in 2030.
The $1 million of the $3 million prize allocated to ATLAS was donated to the CERN & Society Foundation for grants to doctoral students from member institutes to spend research time at CERN.
With files from the Department of Physics and the Breakthrough Prize.