Scientists from the University of Michigan are among numerous researchers globally celebrated with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Often dubbed the Oscars of science, Breakthrough Prizes acknowledge “the fields that pose the most significant inquiries and uncover the deepest explanations,” as noted on the award’s official site. Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki established these awards.

This year, multiple experiments conducted at the Large Hadron Collider belonging to the European Organization for Nuclear Research, commonly referred to as CERN, have received the award for fundamental physics.

Research at the LHC involves thousands of scientists from numerous institutions spanning the globe.

“It’s incredibly thrilling to receive this acknowledgement for an international scientific collaboration,” expressed Jianming Qian, a physics professor and member of the LHC’s ATLAS experiment team. “Large-scale science requires international cooperation, and this exemplifies our potential for productivity.”

ATLAS, which stands for A Toroidal LHC Apparatus, constitutes the largest general-purpose experiment at the LHC. It was recognized alongside three additional LHC experiments: the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, abbreviated as CMS; ALICE, or A Large Ion Collider Experiment; and the LHCb experiment, which represents LHC beauty.

The University of Michigan currently has over 30 researchers engaged in the ATLAS and LHCb experiments. Numerous former students and research fellows have also played a role in the work celebrated by the Breakthrough Prize.

“This research rests upon innovation and scholarship,” stated Bing Zhou, a physics professor and the principal investigator for the ATLAS project from the U.S. Department of Energy. “This is a source of great pride for us.”

The boson that keeps on giving

The LHC gained significant attention and made history by facilitating the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, which contributes to understanding why certain fundamental particles of the universe possess mass.

“People referred to it as a ‘ghost particle’ due to its elusive nature,” noted Zhou. “It took an extensive amount of time to locate it, but having now discovered it, it serves as a crucial tool for probing physics previously beyond our reach. It acts as a conduit to new research.”

The new Breakthrough Prize honors the achievements of the LHC since then in detailing the Higgs boson and investigating other fundamental enigmas of particle physics, such as the reason behind the universe having more matter than antimatter.

“The Breakthrough Prize highlights the commitment and creativity of the ATLAS Collaboration and our colleagues across the LHC experiments,” commented ATLAS spokesperson Stephane Willocq. “This accolade celebrates the shared vision and monumental effort of thousands of ATLAS collaborators across the globe.”

The group of researchers from U-M has been instrumental in this effort.

“The team is significantly involved in various research domains acknowledged by the Breakthrough Prize, which include the precise measurements of Higgs boson characteristics, the investigation of rare processes, and probing nature at minimal distances,” Qian remarked.

The experiment has long had a robust presence from U-M, established by the late and illustrious physicist Homer Neal, after whom U-M’s Homer A. Neal Laboratory is named. Neal founded the U-M ATLAS group with the late Rudolf Thun and Jay Chapman, currently an emeritus professor, back in the 1990s.

At present, the group is led by Zhou, Qian, Junjie Zhu, Thomas Schwarz, and Christian Herwig, comprising over 30 members. They spearheaded the design, use, and enhancement of one of the largest particle detectors globally, the ATLAS muon spectrometer.

“The muon spectrometer has been vital in detecting muons, which are crucial for Higgs boson research, precision electroweak measurements, and new physics investigations,” expressed Zhu, a physics professor. “We take great pride in our contributions with the ATLAS muon spectrometer.”

The group is also responsible for the ATLAS Great Lakes Tier 2 high-performance computing center, supervised by physics researcher Shawn McKee.

The beauty of LHC

U-M’s involvement in the LHCb experiment commenced more recently, when Christine Aidala became part of the collaboration in 2017.

The beauty that represents the ‘b’ in LHCb refers to one of the six “flavors”—beauty, truth, charge, strange, up, and down—in which fundamental particles known as quarks exist. Quarks join together to form more recognizable particles, such as protons and neutrons, while LHCb has also uncovered over 50 previously unidentified bound states for quarks.

Although Aidala and her group aren’t focused on discovering these new particles, they aim to gain a deeper insight into how quarks combine.

“We are concentrating on the more established bound states, of which we have significantly more statistics; however, there remains much to learn,” remarked Aidala, a physics professor.

Her team contributes to efforts involving what is known as the Upstream Tracker sub-detector that became operational in 2022 and plays a leadership role in LHCb’s open data initiative. The aim is to enhance the utility of the experiment’s data for researchers, educators, and students globally.

This includes providing data to researchers outside the LHC. Furthermore, it can be adapted for educational programs allowing undergraduate and even high school students the opportunity to engage with actual data, according to Aidala.

For professional particle physicists, the work conducted at LHCb also aids in clarifying the discrepancy between the universe’s matter and antimatter, an aspect referenced in the Breakthrough Prize announcement.

“Receiving the 2025 Breakthrough Prize is a tremendous honor for the LHCb collaboration,” stated LHCb spokesperson Vincenzo Vagnoni. “It emphasizes the significance of the numerous measurements undertaken by the LHCb experiment in flavor physics and spectroscopy through examining subtle variances between matter and antimatter and the discovery of various new heavy quark hadrons.”

The Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics comes with a reward of $3 million U.S. dollars, which will be donated to the CERN and Society Foundation. The prize money will assist graduate students from the member institutions of CERN.

Breakthrough Prizes were also conferred in the areas of life sciences and mathematics.

“I am exceedingly proud to witness the extraordinary achievements of the LHC collaborations being honored with this distinguished prize,” remarked Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN. “It is a wonderful acknowledgment of the combined efforts, commitment, expertise, and diligence of thousands of individuals from around the world who contribute daily to expanding the horizons of human understanding.”