Physicists probe light smashups to guide future research

Light has no mass, but Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can convert light’s energy into massive particles. Physicists studied matter-generating collisions of light and showed the departure angle of their debris is subtly distorted by quantum interference patterns in the light prior to collision. Their findings will help physicists accurately interpret future experiments aimed at finding ‘new physics’ beyond the Standard Model.