In quantum physics, the particle announced by CERN experiments in 2012 as matching the prediction was the Higgs boson.
On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider announced the observation of a new particle near 125 gigaelectronvolts. Its measured properties were consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the electroweak theory. The discovery completed the experimentally observed set of particles in the Standard Model’s minimal Higgs mechanism.
The Higgs field is associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking, and interactions with that field contribute to the masses of elementary particles such as W and Z bosons and charged fermions. The Higgs boson is the field’s quantum excitation, not the field itself. It is also not responsible for all mass in the universe; much of the proton’s mass comes from strong-interaction energy.
The discovery followed decades of theoretical and experimental work, including the 1964 papers of Peter Higgs and other physicists.