Forty years of the discovery of the Z⁰ boson: the mediator of neutral current interactions

The discovery of the massive vectorial bosons Z⁰ and W was a milestone in the development of the Standard Model of Elementary Particles and provided a comprehension of a wide range of experimentally measured production mechanisms. This article presents an overview of the theory and instrumentation which led to the discovery of the massive vector boson Z⁰ in 1983, one of the mediators of the weak force and responsible for neutral current interactions. A brief historical context of the the development of the Theory of Weak Interactions is done, from the discovery of radioactivity to its unification with the Quantum Electrodynamics, as well as a description of the key experiments involved and a discussion of the obtained results. Finally, the results obtained by the UA1 and UA2 experiments at $Sp\overline{p}S$ are presented, which resulted in the 1984 Nobel Prize.

Keywords:
Particle physics; neutral massive vector boson; electroweak theory; high energy experimental physics