# In the Higgs boson experiments, why are protons used?

Why are protons used to create Higgs particles at CERN? Can anyone please explain the concepts very simply? (How to explain this to a layman?)

In addition to what has already been answered, one of the advantages of proton colliders with respect to $e^+ e^-$ colliders in the context of the Higgs searches, is that you can explore a very wide range of possible Higgs masses, roughly up to 1 TeV. The reason is that the proton is a composite object, and what is involved in the collision are not the protons themselves but one of their elementary constituents (so called partons: quarks, anti-quarks and gluons). And there is always a probability to pick-up a parton having a large fraction of the proton energy and hence, large masses can be probed. This probability is a function of the fraction energy and of the type of partons. It is called Parton Distribution Function, or PDF in short. For $e^+ e^-$ collider the beam energy set up the energy available for the collision. For proton colliders, the beam energy set up the maximum energy available for the collision, but the PDF allows to explore a wide range of mass up to this limit.