highenergy

High energy, in its scientific usage, denotes processes or regimes with energies significantly larger than typical molecular or atomic scales. In physics, high-energy physics (HEP) is the branch that studies fundamental particles and their interactions at energy scales where quantum field theory governs behavior.

Experiments probe energies from GeV to TeV and beyond, using particle accelerators to create high-energy collisions, and detectors to measure the resulting particles. The Standard Model provides the current framework, describing quarks, leptons, and gauge bosons with the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces, while gravity remains outside its scope at these scales. Despite its successes, the Standard Model is incomplete, motivating searches for new phenomena such as supersymmetry, dark matter candidates, and additional Higgs states.

Major facilities include the Large Hadron Collider, Fermilab's Tevatron (decommissioned), and other accelerators worldwide; large detectors like ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb collect data. In addition to collider experiments, high-energy phenomena are studied in astrophysics through cosmic rays and gamma-ray observations, which extend the energy frontier beyond terrestrial accelerators and inform particle physics and cosmology.