First Results From LHC Run 2 From the CMS Experiment

The CMS particle detector is designed to study a wide range of particles and physical processes produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The CMS collaboration realized its first major goal with the co-discovery of the Higgs boson (along with the ATLAS experiment) in 2012. Its remaining goals include the precise determination of the properties of the Higgs boson and the discovery of new particles and phenomena that would finally answer some of the biggest questions in science. Despite the fact that decades of astronomical observations have provided troves of evidence for the existence of the mysterious dark matter through careful study of its gravitational interactions, dark matter has not yet been directly observed. Depending on its still unknown properties, dark matter could be produced copiously at the LHC. The CMS and ATLAS experiments include large teams of scientists, guided by theoretical models for dark matter including supersymmetry and the more general framework of weakly interacting massive particles, and devoted to finding potential signs of dark matter particles produced in proton collisions at the LHC.