How Citizen-Scientists can search for new particles at the LHC

The search was conducted within the framework of “The New Particle Search at the LHC” demonstrator, part of the REINFORCE project. The REINFORCE EU project (Research Infrastructures FOR Citizens in Europe) was a three-year SwafS initiative that engaged citizens in active collaboration with scientists at large research infrastructures across Europe. In this study, citizen-scientists visually analyzed events recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC, searching for signatures of new particles. Additionally, traces of known particles were sonified to enable participation by visually impaired citizens. The results of 450,000 classifications demonstrated that citizen-scientists can perform complex tasks responsibly, achieving performance comparable to purpose-built machine algorithms, while also identifying patterns or errors in individual event reconstructions.