LHCb experiment wins Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) LHCb experiment (Large Hadron Collider experiment) — a scientific collaboration platform involving teams from the Faculty of Physics and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) of the University of Barcelona — is one of the projects that received the prestigious Breakthrough Prize, known as the “Oscars of Science”. The Breakthrough Prize Foundation presented the awards in a ceremony on 5 April in Los Angeles (United States).
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) LHCb experiment (Large Hadron Collider experiment) — a scientific collaboration platform involving teams from the Faculty of Physics and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB) of the University of Barcelona — is one of the projects that received the prestigious Breakthrough Prize, known as the “Oscars of Science”. The Breakthrough Prize Foundation presented the awards in a ceremony on 5 April in Los Angeles (United States).
Overall, the award honoured the collaborative projects LHCb, Alice, Atlas and CMS, which bring together thousands of researchers from more than seventy countries. The scientific contributions of the winning projects have been instrumental in driving detailed measurements of the Higgs boson, discovering new strongly interacting particles, studying rare processes and the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, among other concepts.
As Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) explained, “the award is in recognition of the collective effort, dedication, competence and hard work of thousands of people around the world who push the boundaries of human knowledge every day”. The $3 million prize will be awarded to the CERN & Society Foundation and will be used for scholarships for PhD students from the collaborations’ member institutes to carry out research stays at CERN.
LHCb: asymmetries and antimatter in the Universe
The experiment is based at the CERN headquarters in Switzerland. “The Breakthrough Prize 2025 is a great honour for the LHCb collaboration. It highlights the importance of the numerous measurements performed by the LHCb experiment in the field of flavour physics and spectroscopy by exploring subtle differences between matter and antimatter and the discovery of several new heavy quark hadrons”, said LHC spokesperson Vincenzo Vagnoni.
Professor Carla Marín, a member of the UB team participating in the LHCb experiment, stresses that “it is a recognition of the continuous and collaborative work that has been carried out over many years, and above all teamwork as a key tool for tackling the great challenges of science today”. “More specifically, — he adds — in the field of experimental particle physics, where we need large accelerators and detectors that require teams from all over the world to work together”.
“As part of the experiment, we have made great discoveries with the data from Run 2 (the study period with data collected from 2015 to 2018) and there are many more to come with the large amount of data we are accumulating in Run 3 (with data from 2022 to 2026). All of this is motivation to continue our leading research”, concludes the researcher, who has been awarded an ERC Early Career Grant.
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