The Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced the winners of the 2025 Prize in Fundamental Physics on April 5. Representing the many participants in the ORIGINS Cluster of Excellence, Prof. Laura Fabbietti, coordinator of Connector 7 ("Matter under Extreme Conditions"), and Prof. Lukas Heinrich, coordinator of the ORIGINS Data Science Lab, are proud to receive this award for their collaborative work at the LHC in the ALICE and ATLAS projects.
The four awarded LHC experiments are recognized for testing the Standard Model of particle physics and other theories at high precision. This includes precisely measuring the Higgs boson's properties and deeper insights into how the Higgs field imparts mass to elementary particles. It also involves the investigation of extremely rare particle interactions and exotic states of matter that likely existed in the universe's earliest moments. Researchers have discovered over 72 new hadrons and examined subtle asymmetries between matter and antimatter. Studies have pushed the boundaries of the Standard Model, placing stringent constraints on theories of new physics, such as dark matter, supersymmetry, and hidden extra dimensions. The behavior of matter under extreme conditions of temperature and energy density has been explored, offering a window into the early universe and the formation of hadrons. Detailed analyses of hadron pair interactions are also shedding light on molecular state formation and the dynamics of hadrons interaction.
Prize money benefits doctoral students
This year's Breakthrough Prize, endowed with three million US dollars, went to 13,508 researchers from over 70 countries who are conducting collaborative projects at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Lukas Heinrich explains why this year's list of winners is so long: "Our research at CERN can only be conducted in such large-scale research collaborations involving hundreds of people."
Since the award winners are co-authors of publications based on LHC Run-2 data published between 2015 and July 15, 2024, and not from any specific organization, the LHC experiment leaders have agreed to donate the entire prize money to the CERN & Society Foundation. The money will be made available to doctoral students from member institutes for a research stay at CERN, allowing them to gain valuable experience collaborating with renowned scientists and bring new expertise back to their home countries and institutions.
Laura Fabbietti acknowledges the importance of CERN for the development of her research field. "I benefited enormously from my participation at CERN. For me, it was a decisive turning point in my career. The quality of the data gave us the opportunity to conduct unique research and network globally," she says. Lukas Heinrich, whose group is intensively involved in the study of the Higgs boson and its role in the early universe, also described his participation in the LHC as pivotal to his career. "I have been a member of ATLAS for 15 years and brought this research area to TUM when I became a professor. It is therefore an essential part of my research."
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Contact:
Prof Laura Fabbietti
Technical University Munich / Excellence Cluster ORIGINS
email: laura.fabbietti(at)ph.tum.de
Prof Lukas Heinrich
Technical University Munich / Excellence Cluster ORIGINS
email: l.heinrich(at)tum.de
