CERN heroic deed: University of Siegen wins prestigious physics prize!

CERN heroic deed: University of Siegen wins prestigious physics prize!

On April 17, 2025, the “Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics” was awarded to four important experiments at CERN. This international event celebrates the remarkable advances in particle physics and highlights the collaboration of over 13,500 researchers. Among the awarded projects are the ATLAS, ALICE, CMS and LHCb collaborations, which made groundbreaking discoveries at the world's largest particle accelerator near Geneva.

The University of Siegen plays an essential role in this success. Researchers at the university are part of the ATLAS collaboration, which is known for its studies of high-energy collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For more than 30 years, scientists at the university have been involved in this important large-scale experiment and are involved in various scientific activities, including the development of detector components, calibration and data analysis, as well as the training of young scientists. Students and doctoral candidates have regular contact with the research activities at CERN, which significantly enriches their education.

Scientific achievements

The ATLAS collaboration has made significant progress in the first long phase of operation of the LHC. These include the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, for which ATLAS and CMS were awarded a special prize. In the subsequent phase of the LHC, which took place from 2015 to 2018, the proton collisions were increased to an energy of 13 TeV, which represented a significant improvement in data collection.

An important feature of the ATLAS collaboration is the large number of published scientific papers. According to the information from CERN ATLAS published a total of 408 papers based on the full Run-2 dataset during the second LHC phase. These include remarkable observations of rare particle interactions, such as the simultaneous production of three W bosons and the observation of four top quarks for the first time.

Goals and outlook

The $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, often referred to as the “Oscar of science,” is used by the CERN & Society Foundation to fund graduate student scholarships. These fellowships help train the next generation of particle physicists and promote interdisciplinary collaboration. An outstanding example of this is the Cluster of Excellence “Color meets Flavor”, in which the University of Siegen is involved in order to intensify cooperation in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Another important aspect of the ongoing research is preparation for the third LHC phase, which is expected to provide ten times more data by 2041. The ATLAS collaboration is preparing to further develop its detector technologies to meet the challenges ahead and provide even deeper insights into the fundamental building blocks of the universe.