Search for the Decay of the Higgs Boson to a Pair of Charm Quarks

The most amazing fact about our universe, at least in my mind, is that everything is made from the same fundamental building blocks. These building blocks, which are a small set of elementary particles, can (in principle) describe all phenomena of nature, from the largest galaxy clusters to a single grain of sand. Understanding the nature of these particles and the ways in which they interact with each other is at the heart of particle physics. Today, the description of elementary particles is given within the theory known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM). This theory, established during the mid-1960’s and early-1970’s, has been subject to rigorous testing and its predictions were able to account for almost all experimental results. Yet despite its success, the SM is known to be incomplete; first, Gravitational interactions are not accounted for by the theory, and one must resort to General Relativity in order to describe them. Moreover, observations such as the existence of Dark Matter, matter and anti-matter asymmetry, and neutrino oscillations are examples of phenomena that can not be explained within the framework of the SM. Attempts to resolve these discrepancies are made by developing theories that extend the Standard Model, and seek their evidence in major experimental operations. At the time of writing these lines, no evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) has been found yet.