Supercollider physics
Chris Quigg · 1988
Over the past two decades, the age-old struggle to describe and comprehend the nature of elementary particles and forces has been rewarded by a radically new and simple picture of Nature. This progress has, in large measure, been stimulated by experimental results from particle accelerators, instruments of the kind given to use by Bernard Gregory and his colleagues. We have learned that all matter in its diverse forms is assembled from a few building blocks called quarks and leptons. All known natural phenomena can be described in terms of a few fundamental forces acting among these basic constitutents. The new insights embodied in the Standard Model of elementary-particle physics not only provide a framework for describing and understanding the world around us, but also elucidate the first instants after the creation of the universe. My first order of business will be to summarize the microscopic description of matter to which we have come in the past twenty years. I will review the evidence for quarks and leptons as fundamental constituents and explain the strategy of gauge theories of the fundamental interactions. Next, I will discuss questions the Standard Model raises but cannot answer. We can define a frontier where our current understanding ceases to make sense, where the clues that will lead us to a more satisfying description of Nature will have to be found. That frontier lies at energies of about 10{sup 12} electron volts for collisions among the fundamental constituents. The instrument of choice for reaching this new energy scale is a high-energy, high-luminosity, proton-proton collider. I will conclude by summarizing the status of the American project known as the Superconducting Super Collider, or SSC.