Prestigious Discoveries at CERN: 1973 Neutral Currents, 1983 W & Z Bosons by Roger Cashmore, Luciano Maiani and Jean-Pierre Revol (eds), Springer. Hardback ISBN 3540207503, €39.95 (£30.50, $59.95).
In 1973 CERN physicists found indirect evidence for the existence of the Z boson in so-called "neutral currents". Ten years later, CERN announced the discovery of both the W and Z bosons, which in 1984 brought the laboratory its first Nobel prize, awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer. These discoveries together provided convincing evidence for the electroweak theory, a cornerstone of the modern Standard Model.
In a double-anniversary celebration, CERN held a special symposium on 16 September 2003 (CERN Courier December 2003 p25). This book contains the beautifully illustrated proceedings of that symposium, which covered more than the title suggests, as it encompassed more recent physics at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider and looked at the challenges that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project presents.
Steven Weinberg, a leading architect of the Standard Model, gave the opening talk, "The Making of the Standard Model", in which he spoke of his own contributions to the electroweak theory. The experimental progress that subsequently established the Standard Model came about courtesy of important developments in accelerators. Giorgio Brianti described CERN's various contributions to accelerators and beams, including van der Meer's invention of the magnetic horn and of stochastic cooling, which was crucial to the discovery of the W and Z particles.
Dieter Haidt, a member of the Gargamelle collaboration, described the search for the neutral currents predicted by the electroweak theory, and the difficulties in convincing people that they had been observed in Gargamelle. By the beginning of the 1980s the search was on for the predicted W and Z particles. Pierre Darriulat, one-time spokesman of the UA2 experiment, recalled the decision to convert CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron to a proton-antiproton collider, and the subsequent discovery of the bosons by both UA1, led by Rubbia, and UA2. Peter Zerwas then looked back on the era of LEP and its many tests of the current Standard Model.
The second part of the symposium looked to the future, in particular to the LHC. John Ellis considered the physics possibilities; Lyn Evans presented the problems involved in constructing and operating the collider; Jos Engelen described the building of the detectors; and Paul Messina talked of the challenges in collecting and analysing the vast amounts of data that will be produced.
Many experiments in particle physics over the past 20-30 years owe much to the development of detector techniques, in particular by Georges Charpak at CERN, who was rewarded with a Nobel prize in 1992. In his talk, Charpak recalled many years of work with detectors, and spoke of the opportunities for spreading enthusiasm for physics to the younger generations.
In the final presentation Luciano Maiani, then director-general of CERN, looked to the organization's future. A panel discussion followed, chaired by Rubbia, which considered the future of particle physics. Together these talks present a fascinating record of past discoveries and a look to the future, where more discoveries must surely lie.
Christine Sutton, CERN.