Uppsala University Physicists among Winners of Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
CERN. Image: CERN.
Physicists from Uppsala University are among the thousands of researchers worldwide honored with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the CERN's Large Hadron Collider, LHC.
The four large LHC experiments at CERN – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb – have been awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their results obtained from the Run-2 datasets. The prize was decided by an international jury and announced at a ceremony on April 5 2025 in Los Angeles, USA.
Uppsala University is part of both the ATLAS experiment and the LHCb experiment. The research at Uppsala University within the two experiments focuses on the exploration of nature at the shortest distances.
Around 70 researchers at the Department of Physics and Astronomy has been part of the ATLAS collaboration throughout the years since the very beginning of the experiment in 1992. Members of the ATLAS group at Uppsala University have been directly involved in the Higgs boson observation and the whole group has been involved in either measurements of its properties or searches for new physics involving the Higgs boson.
"When working inside big collaborations, it is difficult to get prizes, that tend to focus on individuals. This prize, that strives to include as many of us as possible, is a nice recognition to the work that we are doing", says Rebeca Gonzalez Suarez, senior lecturer at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and part of the ATLAS group at Uppsala University.
Uppsala University has been part of the LHCb collaboration since 2021. The three members of the LHCb group at Uppsala University are primarily focused on searches for new hadrons and measuring their properties and on measurements of CP violation.
"The LHCb experiment will shed light on why we live in a universe that appears to be composed almost entirely of matter, but no antimatter", says Patrik Adlarson, Researcher at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and part of the LHCb group at Uppsala University.
Next step for the researchers at Uppsala University is to try to understand the Higgs boson and its self-interaction as thoroughly as possible, using existing and upcoming data from the LHC and its high-luminosity upgrade (HL-LHC).
The researchers are also looking for possible signs of new physics, as new phenomena are still needed to explain many open questions in the field, such as dark matter.
"We are also taking central responsibility for upgrading the ATLAS detector for the HL-LHC. Beyond that, we are involved in future particle colliders, from both the research and development, as well as the physics case", says Rebeca Gonzalez Suarez.
Camilla Thulin
Facts
The Breakthrough Prize
The Breakthrough Prize specifically highlights the detailed measurements of Higgs boson properties confirming 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 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.