Manchester Physicists Celebrate A Second Consecutive Year Of Success At The Breakthrough Prizes For Decades-Long Muon Experiment

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Manchester Physicists Celebrate A Second Consecutive Year Of Success At The Breakthrough Prizes For Decades-Long Muon Experiment

The University of Manchester is celebrating a second consecutive year of success at the Breakthrough Prizes, with Manchester physicists again recognised for their leadership in one of the most ambitious and long-running experiments in particle physics.

Researchers from Manchester are among the international team awarded the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their contributions to the Muon g-2 experiment, a 60-year scientific endeavour spanning CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab. The prize follows Manchester's prominent role in the 2025 Breakthrough Prize, awarded to the ATLAS and LHCb collaborations at CERN for precision tests of the Standard Model and discoveries including new particles and matter-antimatter asymmetries.

Valued at $3 million, the Breakthrough Prize is often dubbed the "Oscars of Science" and is considered the world's premier science award. Unlike the Nobel Prize, which recognises up to three individuals or a single organisation, the Breakthrough Prize honours the approximately 350 collaborators across the world who produced the most precise measurement ever achieved at a particle accelerator: the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon.

Understanding the muon's magnetic moment

Muons, one of the smallest known particles, interact with a sea of virtual particles that constantly flicker in and out of existence. Acting like tiny magnets, their magnetic moment shifts slightly due to these quantum effects. Comparing the measured value with theoretical predictions reveals the composition of this quantum "foam" and tests whether unknown particles or forces exist beyond the Standard Model.

Decades of increasingly precise measurements now indicate that the Standard Model remains our best description of fundamental physics.

Manchester leadership across UK institutions

The UK played a central role in the collaboration, providing one of the experiment's two major detector systems and in developing simulations and software to analyse the data alongside contributions to the theoretical calculations.

Professor Mark Lancaster, from The University of Manchester, led the UK involvement across Manchester, Lancaster, Liverpool and UCL, and served as co-spokesperson of the global Fermilab Muon g-2 collaboration between 2018 and 2020.

A global scientific milestone

The Muon g-2 experiments began at CERN in the 1970s, moved to Brookhaven in the 1990s and concluded at Fermilab with the final publication in 2025. The goal was to measure the muon's magnetic moment with ever-increasing precision, probing the quantum vacuum where virtual particles appear and vanish. Even the smallest deviation from theoretical predictions could point to new physics beyond the Standard Model.

The achievement represents the combined effort of scientists and engineers across multiple disciplines, reflecting the scale and diversity of expertise required to reach record-breaking precision.

With Manchester researchers again at the forefront of a globally celebrated breakthrough, the University continues to demonstrate its leadership in shaping the future of particle physics and advancing our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

Professor Mark Lancaster FRS said "Our attention at Manchester now turns to a next generation of experiments that are striving to find evidence of new particles and interactions using novel quantum technologies"