Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to CERN collaborations during a ceremony on 5 April in Los Angeles. The prize goes to the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb collaborations, which bring together scientists from more than 70 countries.
Andreas Hoecker, Patricia McBride, Marco van Leeuwen and Vincenzo Vagnoni (from left) accept the award during the 11th Breakthrough Prize in Physics ceremony on April 5, 2025 in Santa Monica, California. | photo: Photo: Lester Cohen/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize
"The award of the Breakthrough Prize is a significant recognition of the fundamental research we are conducting at CERN. The Czech Republic has been involved in experiments at the LHC for more than 30 years and our scientists have contributed not only to many physical analyses and fundamental discoveries, but also to the development of key detector components, their operation and upgrades. The Breakthrough Prize is a form of saying thank you to all those who are not afraid to do basic research – science where it is mainly about the knowledge itself and where some practical application may come decades later," says Tomáš Jakoubek from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Representatives of the four experiments have decided to use the $3 million for scholarships for PhD students from member countries to help nurture the next generation of scientists. The awards were given to researchers for papers published by July 2024 that used data from the so-called second run of the Large Hadron Collider – the LHC. The upcoming upgrade of the accelerator is expected to increase its power from 2030 onwards, and the scientists expect the so-called High-Luminosity LHC to deliver exciting new results.
"I am extremely proud to have contributed to one of the most important measurements in particle physics in recent years – the determination of the properties of the Higgs boson using data from the second run of the LHC," said Daniel Scheirich of Charles University, who works in the ATLAS experiment. "Our findings confirm that the current understanding of particle interactions is correct, and by rigorously testing these interactions we are laying the groundwork for discovering even subtle deviations that could point the way to new horizons in our understanding of the fundamental forces and new physics," Scheirich said.
The ATLAS and CMS experiments jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, and they both have since made significant progress in exploring its properties. In addition, as universal detectors, both experiments are involved in a wide range of other areas of physics, such as the search for new particles or the study of the properties of top quarks, dark matter, supersymmetry and extra dimensions. Their focus covers both the precise measurement of Standard Model processes and the search for physics beyond the Standard Model.
Katarína Křížková Gajdošová is working in the ALICE experiment, which studies the quark-gluon plasma, a state of extremely hot and dense matter that existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang. "Even after many years of research, we still have a lot to learn about this state of matter. We can create matter during collisions of heavy lead nuclei at the LHC. Measurements in recent years show that a similar medium can be created in much smaller and simpler systems, such as collisions of two protons, which was very unexpected and surprising. I am realy happy to have been there at the beginning of these discoveries, to which my measurements in the ALICE experiment have contributed."
The LHCb experiment investigates, among other things, subtle but fundamental differences between matter and antimatter, fundamental symmetry violation and the complex spectra of composite particles ("hadrons") made up of both heavy and light quarks.
"The award of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize is a great honour for the LHCb. It highlights the importance of the many measurements that the LHCb experiment has made in the field of flavour physics and spectroscopy exploring subtle differences between matter and antimatter and discovering several new hadrons composed of heavy quarks," says LHCb spokesperson Vincenzo Vagnoni.