The Breakthrough Prize Foundation announced the winners of the 2025 Breakthrough Prizes in Los Angeles, USA on April 5. Among the winners jointly awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics were researchers from the Center for High Energy Physics at Tsinghua University participating in the LHCb, ATLAS, and CMS experiments. A total of 13,508 researchers from more than 70 countries are recognized for testing the modern theory of particle physics – the Standard Model – and other theories describing physics that might lie beyond it to high precision. This includes precisely measuring properties of the Higgs boson and elucidating the mechanism by which the Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles; probing extremely rare particle interactions, and exotic states of matter that existed in the first moments of the universe; discovering new hadrons and measuring subtle differences between matter and antimatter particles; and setting strong bounds on possibilities for new physics beyond the Standard Model, including dark matter, supersymmetry, and hidden extra dimensions. The winners represent four experimental collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb (Fig. 1).
Within these experiments, ATLAS and CMS are general-purpose experiments pursue the full program of exploration offered by the LHC’s high-energy and high-intensity proton and ion beams. They synchronously announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 and continue to investigate its properties. ALICE studies the quark-gluon plasma, a state of extremely hot and dense matter that existed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang. In addition, LHCb explores minute differences between matter and antimatter, violations of fundamental symmetries, and the complex spectra of composite particles (“hadrons”) made of heavy and light quarks. By performing these extraordinarily precise and delicate tests, the LHC experiments have pushed the boundaries of fundamental physics to unprecedented limits.
Fig. 1. The 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is awarded to thousands of researchers representing four experimental collaborations – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb.
Tsinghua University joined the LHCb experiment in 2000, ATLAS in 2014, and CMS in 2017 respectively, contributing significantly to the detector construction, maintenance, operation, and upgrades. Key contributions include the LHCb experiment’s outer tracker, trigger electronics, next-generation scintillating fiber tracker, and electromagnetic calorimeter; the ATLAS experiment’s inner tracker; and the CMS experiment’s GEM detector, High-Granularity calorimeter, and MIP timing detector.
In recent years, the LHC has discovered 77 new hadrons, marking a new chapter in hadron physics. Tsinghua teams co-discovered 15 of these (nearly 20%). The LHCb team from the Department of Engineering Physics co-discovered the first pentaquark, the first double-charmed baryon, and multiple tetraquark and pentaquark states. The CMS team from the Department of Physics co-discovered the fully-charmed tetraquark X(6600) and its triplet family, while the ATLAS team from the Department of Physics found the evidence of a new decay mode for the X(6900) tetraquark.
Fig. 2. 77 new hadrons have been discovered at the LHC, with 69 observed by the LHCb experiment and the remaining 8 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments. The LHCb team from the Department of Engineering Physics at Tsinghua University co-discovered 14 new hadrons, while the CMS team from the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University co-discovered one new hadron.
Additionally, Tsinghua’s LHCb team contributed to the recent discovery of baryon CP violation. The ATLAS team explored Higgs decays involving flavor-changing neutral currents (e.g., H→tt), the CP properties of the Higgs boson. The CMS team participated in measuring the H→4l decay, with members receiving the CMS Collaboration’s 2021 Annual Award.
The award is shared by over 10,000 researchers in total, including approximately 80 current and former Tsinghua researchers. Current Tsinghua-affiliated laureates include:
LHCb Team (alphabetical order; * denotes faculty):
Xinchen Dai, Chenzhi Dongm, Guanghua Gong*, Xiaofan Hu, Youen Kang, Anfeng Li, Zhengchen Lian, Ge Ma, Fanjie Meng, Xiaofan Pan, Ning Qin, Yuxiang Song, Yinghua Tan, Da Yu Tou, Jianqiao Wang, Liangjun Xu, Ming Zeng*, Liming Zhang*, Yuge Zhang, Zhicai Zhang*, Xutao Zheng, Xianglei Zhu*.
ATLAS Team (alphabetical order; * denotes faculty):
Xin Chen*, Hui Li, Shaogang Peng, Yan Zhou.
CMS Team (alphabetical order; * denotes faculty):
Jinjing Gu, Zhen Hu*, Zhengchen Liang, Jinfeng Liu, Xining Wang, Yi Wang*, Hongwei Wen.
The Center for High Energy Physics at Tsinghua University is an academic center established by the university to conduct research in high-energy physics. It is primarily engaged in theoretical and experimental studies of particle physics and high-energy nuclear physics, as well as fostering academic exchanges both domestically and internationally.
The LHC teams at the Center for High Energy Physics are supported by the National Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Ministry of Education of China, and Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program.
Editor: Li Han
