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The Physics Teacher -- December 2011 -- Volume 49, Issue 9, pp. 544

Black Holes and the Large Hadron Collider

Arunava Roy

Young Harris College, Young Harris, GA

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The European Center for Nuclear Research or CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has caught our attention partly due to the film “Angels and Demons.” In the movie, an antimatter bomb attack on the Vatican is foiled by the protagonist. Perhaps just as controversial is the formation of mini black holes (BHs). Recently, the American Physical Society1 website featured an article on BH formation at the LHC.2 This article examines some aspects of mini BHs and explores the possibility of their detection at the LHC.

© 2011 American Association of Physics Teachers

KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

astronomy, black holes, elementary particles, hadrons, physics education, position sensitive particle detectors, standard model

PACS

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0031-921X (print)  

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Association of Physics Teachers

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.3661097

  1. www.aps.org.
  2. Matthew W. Choptuik and Frans Pretorius, “Ultra relativistic particle collisions,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 111101 (2010). e-Print: arXiv:0908.1780 [gr-qc].
  3. “The Elegant Universe,” NOVA, PBS; www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/.
  4. Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (W. W. Norton & Co., 2003).
  5. C. Lefevre, “LHC: The Guide”; cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1165534/.
  6. John Roach, “Supermassive black hole at center of Milky Way, study hints,” National Geographic News (Oct. 28, 2010); news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1102_051102_black_hole.html.
  7. Physics of Black Holes: A Guided Tour (Lecture Notes in Physics), edited by Eleftherios Papantonopoulos (Springer, 2009).
  8. Paul Halpern, Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles (Wiley, 2009).
  9. Focus on Black Hole Research, edited by Paul V. Kreitler (Nova Science Publishers, 2006).
  10. Black Holes and Galaxy Formation, edited by Adonis D. Wachter and Raphael J. Propst (Nova Science Publishers, 2010).
  11. Particle Physics And Cosmology: The Quest For Physics Beyond The Standard Model(s): Tasi 2002, edited by Howard E. Haber and Ann E. Nelson (World Scientific Publishing Co., 2004).
  12. S. W. Hawking, “Particle creation by black holes,” Commun. Math. Phys. 43, 199–220 (1975). [Inspec] [ISI]
  13. Michael C. LoPresto, “Some simple black hole thermodynamics,” Phys. Teach. 41, 299–301 (May 2003)PHTEAH000041000005000299000001.
  14. The following conversions from high-energy physics units to SI units were used: 1.22×1019  GeV➔1.78×10−8  kg and 1.22×1019  GeV➔1.42×1032  K. Derived from D. H. Perkins, Introduction to High-Energy Physics (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1982).
  15. Sabine Hossenfelder, “What black holes can teach us?” in Focus on Black Hole Research (Nova Science Publishers, 2005), pp. 155–192, e-Print: hep-ph/0412265.
  16. Andrew Zimmerman Jones (Author) and Daniel Robbins (Contributor), String Theory for Dummies (Wiley, 2009).
  17. S. Weinberg, The Quantum Theory of Fields. Vol. 3: Supersymmetry (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000).
  18. Ref. 13 offers an excellent mathematical insight into the properties of BHs.

Figures (click on thumbnails to view enlargements)

FIG.1
BH formation and decay due to particle collisions.15 Non-head-on collisions between the two particles could create a spinning BH. Here spin is denoted by J.

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