A team of scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has conducted an experiment to determine if the universe’s heaviest elementary particle, the top quark, obeys Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity. The results indicate that the laws of physics governing the cosmos are consistent with relativity.
In a first-of-its-kind experiment, the CMS collaboration attempted to discover if the top quark, which is not composed of smaller particles, always follows the rules of special relativity. Specifically, they investigated the concept of Lorentz symmetry, which states that the laws of physics should be the same for all observers who aren’t accelerating.
However, some theories suggest that at extremely high energies, special relativity may fail due to Lorentz violation or symmetry breaking. This could lead to differences in experimental observations depending on the orientation of the experiment and the observer’s frame of reference.
The CMS team searched for remnants of such Lorentz symmetry breaking using pairs of top quarks, which are nature’s heaviest elementary particles. They reasoned that if the collisions between protons accelerated to near-light-speeds depend on orientation, then the rate at which top-quark pairs produced by such events should vary with time.
As Earth rotates, the direction of the proton beams generated for particle collisions changes. This means that the direction of the top quarks created by such collisions should also change, resulting in a deviation from a constant rate of top quark pair production dependent on the time of day.
However, using data from Run 2 of the LHC, which was conducted between 2015 and 2018, the CMS collaboration found no such deviation. This suggests that there is no sign of Lorentz symmetry breaking, and thus no evidence of top quarks defying Einstein’s rules regardless of proton beam orientation or time of day.
The team’s research paves the way for future searches for Lorentz symmetry breaking based on top-quark data from the upcoming third run of the LHC.
Source: https://www.space.com/Quark-Large-Hadron-Collider-heaviest-elementry-particle-obeys-Einstein