The results of the most comprehensive studies of the properties of the unique particle were released today, ten years after the discovery. Two papers published today in Nature show that the particle's properties are in line with the Standard Model of particle physics. The studies show that the particle is becoming a powerful way to search for new, unknown phenomena that could help shed light on some of the biggest mysteries of physics.
A fundamental to describe the universe as we know it is the existence of the Higgs field. Without this field, elementary particles such as the quark constituents of the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei, as well as the electrons that surround the nuclei, would not have mass.
In order to explore the full potential of the data for the study of the Higgs boson, it is necessary to combine multiple processes in which the particle is created and decays.
This is what the collaborations have done in their new, independent studies, using their full LHC Run 2 data sets, which each include over 10 000 trillion proton–proton collisions and about 8 million Higgs bosons. The new studies combine an unprecedented number of different production and decay processes to get the most precise and detailed set of measurements to date.
All of the measurements are in line with the predictions of the Standard Model. The carriers of the weak force have an uncertainty of six percent. Similar analyses resulted in a 15% uncertainty for that interaction strength.
A detailed map of its interactions with force carriers and matter particles has been provided by the two experiments. There are questions related to the evolution of the early universe and its stability, as well as to the striking mass pattern of matter particles. There is an exciting, deep and broad experimental effort that will continue throughout the full program.
Luca Malgeri, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says that it was "unthinkable" to sketch a portrait of the boson before it started working. The reasons for this achievement are many and include the exceptional performances of the LHC and of the detectors.
The new combination analyses give strict bounds on the interaction between the Standard Model and the unseen particles that may make up dark matter.
From the collider's major upgrade, the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), from 2029, the nature of the Higgs boson will be revealed using data from the run. With about 18 million Higgs bosons projected to be produced in each experiment in Run 3 and some 180 million in the HL-LHC's runs, the collaborations expect to not only reduce the measurement uncertainties of the Higgs boson's interactions but also to observe some of them.
More information: The CMS Collaboration. A portrait of the Higgs boson by the CMS experiment ten years after the discovery. Nature (2022). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04892-x , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04892-xThe map of interactions by the ATLAS experiment was published in Nature. The article can be found at www.nature.com/articles/s.
Journal information: Nature
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