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Studierende sitzt am Arbeitsplatz und schaut auf den Laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund
International collaborations

Experiments at CERN honored with "Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics"

© Samuel Joseph Hertzog​/​CERN
At the LHC particle accelerator, protons are accelerated to almost the speed of light and brought to collision.
Scientists from all over the world work at the CERN research center in Switzerland, where the world's most powerful particle accelerator is running - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The four major collaborations at the LHC have now been awarded the prestigious "Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2025". Four working groups from TU Dortmund University's Department of Physics are also involved in two of these experiments. The award ceremony took place in Los Angeles at the beginning of April. The prize money of 3 million US dollars will be used to fund scholarships for doctoral students from the member institutions so that they can complete research stays at CERN.

At CERN, international scientists are working together to track down previously unknown particles. At the same time, they are investigating the properties and interactions of elementary particles that have already been discovered in order to clarify unsolved questions in physics. In an underground, ring-shaped tunnel with a circumference of around 27 kilometers, proton packets are accelerated to almost the speed of light and deliberately made to collide. This produces countless elementary particles. Huge detectors measure their energies and decay processes with the highest precision.

TU physicists are involved in two of these detectors: Prof. Johannes Albrecht and Dr. Dominik Mitzel are working with their teams on the Large Hadron Collider-beauty experiment, or LHCb for short. The groups of Prof. Kevin Kröninger and Dr. Chris Malena Delitzsch are researching the ATLAS experiment. The "Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics" has now been awarded for all four major experiments, which in addition to LHCb and ATLAS also include ALICE and CMS - and in which a total of more than 10,000 researchers from over 70 countries are involved.

Outstanding contributions to particle physics

The prize recognizes outstanding contributions to particle physics made at the LHC over the past decade. As a universal detector, ATLAS investigates the entire spectrum of physical questions made possible by the LHC's high-energy proton and ion beams. Together with CMS, the ATLAS scientists announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 and have been analyzing its properties ever since. Among other things, the LHCb collaboration is focusing on the differences between matter and antimatter, the violation of fundamental symmetries and the complex structure of hadrons made up of heavy and light quarks.

From 2030, the discovery potential of the LHC is to be significantly increased once again with the next major upgrade of the accelerator. At TU Dortmund University, the work on the LHC is also fundamental for other projects: For example, the experiments provide important data for the planned Cluster of Excellence "Color meets Flavor", with which particle physicists* at TU Dortmund University are competing with partners in the Excellence Strategy.

About the prize

The Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was established in 2012 by technology investor Yuri Milner, who is also involved in promoting science. He initiated the Breakthrough Prizes as highly endowed awards in the fields of physics, life sciences and mathematics.

To the CERN press release

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