UA Physics Professor Ina Sarcevic Featured in New York Times Coverage of Major Particle Collider Upgrade
Maximilien Brice/CERN
University of Arizona physicist Ina Sarcevic was quoted in a New York Times article published September 17 on the historic upgrade of the world's most powerful particle accelerator. The article details how CERN has powered down the Large Hadron Collider and begun a four-year, $1.46 billion transformation that will produce an effectively new machine: the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC).
The upgraded accelerator will increase the rate of subatomic particle collisions by a factor of ten — dramatically improving scientists' chances of detecting rare phenomena, including particles associated with dark matter. For Prof. Sarcevic, that prospect is the most compelling of all.
"I would personally be most excited about looking at some new particles, like those which are dark matter," she told the Times. "It's going to be hard. There is no guarantee for that, but I would be very excited about that."
The original LHC's greatest triumph was the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, which confirmed a cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics. But the Standard Model remains incomplete — it cannot account for dark matter, believed to make up roughly 27 percent of the universe. The HL-LHC, expected to produce 15 million Higgs bosons per year, will give researchers an unprecedented dataset for searching for new particles beyond the Standard Model.
Prof. Sarcevic is a leading theorist in high-energy particle physics and astrophysics at UA, with research spanning collider phenomenology, neutrino physics, and cosmic ray interactions. The new machine is expected to come online in the early 2030s.
The full New York Times article is available at nytimes.com. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/science/scientists-overhaul-giant-particle-collider-in-search-of-universes-hidden-building-blocks.html?unlocked_article_code=1.CFE.1iXC.ZUk5vVziHvBa&smid=em-share