{"id":134390,"date":"2022-01-20T09:22:42","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T17:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/large-hadron-collider-new-insight-into-the-internal-structure-of-the-proton"},"modified":"2022-01-20T09:22:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T17:22:42","slug":"large-hadron-collider-new-insight-into-the-internal-structure-of-the-proton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/large-hadron-collider-new-insight-into-the-internal-structure-of-the-proton","title":{"rendered":"Large Hadron Collider: New Insight Into the Internal Structure of the Proton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/large-hadron-collider-new-insight-into-the-internal-structure-of-the-proton3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is well known for smashing protons together, it is actually the quarks and gluons inside the protons \u2013 collectively known as <em>partons<\/em> \u2013 that are really interacting. Thus, in order to predict the rate of a process occurring in the LHC \u2013 such as the production of a Higgs boson or a yet-unknown particle \u2013 physicists have to understand how partons behave within the proton. This behavior is described in Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs), which describe what fraction of a proton\u2019s momentum is taken by its constituent quarks and gluons.<\/p>\n<p>Knowledge of these PDFs has traditionally come from lepton\u2013proton colliders, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desy.de\/research\/facilities__projects\/hera\/index_eng.html\">HERA at DESY<\/a>. These machines use point-like particles, such as electrons, to directly probe the partons within the proton. Their research revealed that, in addition to the well-known up and down valence quarks that are inside a proton, there is also a sea of quark\u2013antiquark pairs in the proton. This sea is theoretically made of all types of quarks, bound together by gluons. Now, studies of the LHC\u2019s proton\u2013proton collisions are providing a detailed look into PDFs, in particular the proton\u2019s gluon and quark-type composition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is well known for smashing protons together, it is actually the quarks and gluons inside the protons \u2013 collectively known as partons \u2013 that are really interacting. Thus, in order to predict the rate of a process occurring in the LHC \u2013 such as the production of a Higgs [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}