For decades, theory provided a map that pointed physicists towards new particles and told them roughly what to look for. Now, as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) prepares for its most powerful incarnation yet, we have reached the limits of the map. In late June, the LHC shut down high-energy operations ahead of a major overhaul.
When it switches back on in 2030 as the High-Luminosity LHC, it will produce around 10 times as many collisions as before. Somewhere in that sea of data, physicists hope, may be signs of particles and forces we have never seen. This situation leaves particle physicists with an unusual problem.
The upgraded LHC will give them more territory to explore than ever before, but fewer clues about where the treasure is buried. Worse, its torrent of collisions will create an extraordinary computational challenge: any glimpse of new physics may be buried under billions of perfectly ordinary events. Sarah Alam Malik, a particle physicist at University College London, thinks quantum technologies could help.
After more than a decade searching for dark matter at the LHC, she is developing quantum algorithms to spot unusual patterns in collision data. The hope is that, if physicists can record more of the strange quantum features inherent in particle collisions, her algorithms could probe those to search for new physics beyond the standard model – our best theory of the universe so far. New Scientist spoke with Malik about how quantum computers could help us parse this coming deluge of data for new particles and even reveal clues in the elusive search for dark matter.
Thomas Lewton: Why are we sure that there are new particles out there to find? Sarah Alam Malik: Partly, because we can’t explain everything we’ve seen in the universe with just the standard model, the best theory of reality that we have so far. For example, we know there’s something that we’ve dubbed dark matter, which accounts for a quarter of the universe.
It is some invisible scaffolding that holds together the universe at large, and we have evidence of it from the scales of individual galaxies – from the rotational velocities of stars within those galaxies – all the way through to the large-scale structure formation of the universe. So, there’s overwhelming evidence that there is something out there, some kind of unseen mass. One of the most compelling proposals for what it might be lies within the domain of particle physics, and is something we call weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).
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