• India has joined the global scientific community in celebrating the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics being awarded to the ATLAS, CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) and LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

• The prestigious $3 million prize recognises groundbreaking discoveries made during LHC Run-2 from 2015-2024 that have advanced our understanding of the Higgs boson, quark-gluon plasma, and fundamental particles.

• The $3 million prize is allocated to ATLAS ($1 million), CMS ($1 million), ALICE ($500,000) and LHCb ($500,000).

• The prize money will support doctoral students from member countries to conduct research at CERN, fostering the next generation of particle physicists.

• The Breakthrough Prize is popularly known as the “oscars of science” 

• The Breakthrough Prize Foundation honours scientists driving remarkable discoveries in gene editing, human diseases, the fundamental particles of the Universe and its underlying mathematical principles.

What is CERN?

• CERN is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. 

• It is the European Council for Nuclear Research (in French Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucleaire).

• Its headquarters is situated in Geneva. 

• The CERN convention was signed in 1953 by 12 founding countries and entered into force on September 29, 1954.

• Today CERN has 24 Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

• Cyprus and Slovenia are Associate Member States in the pre-stage to Membership. 

• Brazil, Croatia, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Türkiye and Ukraine are Associate Member States.

• Japan and the United States of America hold Observer status.

• Over 600 institutes and universities around the world use CERN’s facilities. 

• Funding agencies from both Member and Non-Member States are responsible for the financing, construction and operation of the experiments on which they collaborate. 

• CERN spends much of its budget on building machines such as the Large Hadron Collider and it only partially contributes to the cost of the experiments.

• Since CERN began in 1954, it has made many significant breakthroughs, both in particle physics (such as our early discovery of neutral currents) and technologies that have helped improve our day-to-day lives (including the World Wide Web). Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (www) in 1989, while working at CERN.

What is Large Hadron Collider (LHC)?

• The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most powerful particle accelerator ever built. 

• The accelerator sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground at CERN on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.

• It first started up on September 10, 2008.

• It consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures that boost the energy of the particles along the way.

• Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before they are made to collide at four locations around its ring.

• The beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes — two tubes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. They are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field maintained by superconducting electromagnets. 

• The detectors gather clues about the particles – including their speed, mass and charge – from which physicists can work out a particle’s identity.

Why is it called the Large Hadron Collider?

• “Large” refers to its size, approximately 27 km in circumference.

• “Hadron” because it accelerates protons or ions, which belong to the group of particles called hadrons.

• “Collider” because the particles form two beams travelling in opposite directions, which are made to collide at four points around the machine.

India’s involvement with CERN

• India’s involvement with CERN dates back to the 1960s, when scientists from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) visited CERN to expose emulsion stacks to pion, kaon and proton beams utilising the CERN Proton Synchrotron. 

• Later, during the 1980s there was contribution towards hardware and core-software for the L3 — one of the four large experiments in the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) and significant contributions in the areas of Z-line shape (related to neutron, proton ratio in nuclei) and new particle searches.

• In the 1990s, the collaboration expanded into heavy ion physics, with Indian groups contributing a scintillator-pad-based photon multiplicity detector. 

• Indian teams played key roles in the WA93 and WA98 experiments at CERN-SPS, achieving early measurements of collective flow and exploring disoriented chiral condensates.

• In 1991, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) signed a cooperation agreement with CERN for development of Scientific and Technical Cooperation in the Research Projects of CERN, with a formal cooperation agreement signed in 1991. 

• This was further strengthened by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in 2009, laying the groundwork for expanded collaboration in accelerator technology, detector R&D, computing infrastructure, and human resource training. 

• The agreement also facilitates joint research and greater Indian participation in CERN’s long-term projects.

• In recognition of the significant Indian contributions towards the Large Hadron Collider project, India was awarded the “Observer” status in 2002 and finally, India became an Associate Member State of CERN in 2017. 

• India has been a committed and active partner in the LHC program of CERN and proudly acknowledges this international recognition while celebrating its significant contributions to the experiments and the LHC infrastructure.

• Indian scientists and researchers have played a significant role in the international collaboration for the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) and the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiments. 

• Several Indian institutes, universities, and scientists have contributed both intellectually and technically to the experiment’s success. 

• From detector development to data analysis, various teams of Indian researchers have been actively involved at every stage of the experiments, right from their inception. 

• India’s involvement spans all layers of the LHC program — from accelerator technology to major physics experiments — through national support from the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). 

• India actively participates in the governance and decision-making processes for various experiments being conducted and planned at CERN. 

• Indian scientists and institutions are also represented on prominent CERN boards and committees, including Research and Resources Board (RRB), Advisory Committee of CERN Users (ACCU) and Scientific Council.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants.)