texas a&m university physicist roland e allen has written a comprehensive review of the higgs boson that explains the significance of this elusive particle its recent experimental discovery and the nobel prize-winning proposal for its existence nearly half a century ago allens paper the higgs bridge was published monday (dec 9) by the international journal physica scripta in tandem with a special topical issue entitled nobel symposium 154: physics of the large hadron collider the celebratory edition stimulated by the higgs discovery announced july 4 2012 is timed to commemorate nobel prize week events underway since last friday in stockholm and culminating in the nobel prize award ceremony and nobel banquet celebrating this years nobel laureates on tuesday (dec 10) physica scripta which is published by the institute of physics (iop) on behalf of the royal swedish academy of sciences occasionally publishes tutorial papers that are meant to bridge gaps in readers knowledge and to provide insight into problems methods and results in different areas of physics allens is intended as an accessible overview and comprehensive teaching tool for undergraduate students and lecturers across a broad spectrum beyond physics who are interested in the physics behind the higgs boson from how it affects the standard model to how it could impact our future understanding of the universe ‘the higgs bridge connects the higgs boson to both future discoveries and essentially the rest of physics and astronomy nuclear condensed matter atomic and quantum optics cosmology and astrophysics allen said in addition to overlapping all five areas in the texas a&m department of physics and astronomy it also touches on several international experiments in which texas a&m researchers are major participants and includes figures from cms at the large hadron collider and the ams [alpha magnetic spectrometer] cdms [condensed dark matter search] and lux [large underground xenon] experiments allen a theoretical physicist at texas a&m since 1970 is well-respected for his teaching having received the texas a&m association of former students distinguished achievement award in teaching at both the college (2003) and university levels (2004) he also is the author of more than 200 scholarly publications on a wide variety of subjects and has organized numerous related conferences and symposia allens paper is available online at http://iopscienceioporg/1402-4896/89/1 and also is featured in the introduction to the lhc nobel symposium proceedings (top of page 2) at http://iopscienceioporg/1402-4896/2013/t158 to learn more about allen and his teaching research and professional service visit dr roland e allen read additional information on the higgs boson discovery and texas a&ms role in advancing both the theory and the experiments that proved its existence # # # # # # # # # # about research at texas a&m university: as one of the worlds leading research institutions texas a&m is in the vanguard in making significant contributions to the storehouse of knowledge including that of science and technology research conducted at texas a&m represents annual expenditures of more than $776 million that research creates new knowledge that provides basic fundamental and applied contributions resulting in many cases in economic benefits to the state nation and world to learn more visit http://vprtamuedu -atm- contact: shana k hutchins (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@sciencetamuedu or dr roland e allen (979) 845-4341 or allen@tamuedu