The international scientific award in the field of natural sciences, the Breakthrough Prize, was announced on April 5th. In the category of Fundamental Physics, an international collaborative experimental group—including Professor Nanjo, Associate Professor Masubuchi, and Assistant Professor Hirose from the Nanjo Laboratory—was selected as a recipient. The award was granted to four experimental collaborations—ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb—that utilize the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). Their achievements, such as high-precision measurements of the Higgs boson and the elucidation of the mechanism of mass generation, based on data from the Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), were highly recognized. From the University of Osaka, the Nanjo Group, part of the Department of Physics in the Graduate School of Science, has been participating in the ATLAS experiment. They have contributed to revealing the properties of the Higgs boson, searching for new particles, and the operation and upgrade of semiconductor detectors. The ATLAS experiment will continue data acquisition during Run 3, which will last until 2026. Afterward, the LHC will undergo a high-luminosity upgrade (HL-LHC), and the ATLAS detector will also be upgraded, with data-taking for the Run 4 scheduled to begin around 2030. The Nanjo Group has been actively contributing to the detector operation and data analysis for Run 3 and is preparing for the upgraded detector and future experiments in HL-LHC Run 4.
ATLAS Experiment
ATLAS Japan Group
Breakthrough Prize Announcement
Press Release from the ATLAS Experiment: