The adventures of the Large Hadron Collider: from the Big Bang to the Higgs boson

An introduction to the world of quarks and leptons, and of their interactions governed by fundamental symmetries of nature, as well as an introduction to the connection that exists between worlds of the infinitesimally small and the infinitely large. The book starts with a simple presentation of the theoretical framework, the so-called Standard Model, which evolved gradually since the 1960's. This is followed by its main experimental successes, and its weaknesses and incompleteness. We proceed then with the incredible story of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN — the largest purely scientific project ever realized. What follows is the discussion of the conception, design and construction of the detectors of size and complexity without precedent in scientific history. The book summarizes the main physics results obtained firstly during the initial phase of operation of the LHC, which culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 (the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013). This is followed by the results obtained in subsequent years up to 2016, consolidating and expanding these findings. These successes have undoubtedly made CERN the focal point, both of intellectual endeavor and technological innovation in this domain of science. In the last chapter, we describe some plans for LHC and the possible evolution of the field.