Ingrid Fadelli is a writer for the website Phys.org.

Evidence of Higgs boson contributions to the production of Z boson pairs at high energies
Left: two-parameter likelihood scan of the off-shell gg and EW production signal strength parameters, 𝜇off-shellF and 𝜇off-shellV, respectively. The dot-dashed and dashed contours enclose the 68% (−2Δln𝐿=2.30) and 95% (−2Δln𝐿=5.99) CL regions. The cross marks the minimum, and the blue diamond marks the SM expectation. The integrated luminosity reaches only up to 138 fb−1 as on-shell 4ℓ events are not included in performing this scan. Right: observed (solid) and expected (dashed) one-parameter likelihood scans over ΓH. Scans are shown for the combination of 4ℓ on-shell data with 4ℓ off-shell (magenta) or 2ℓ2ν off-shell data (green) alone, or with both datasets (black). The horizontal lines indicate the 68% (−2Δln𝐿=1.0) and 95% (−2Δln𝐿=3.84) CL regions. The integrated luminosity reaches up to 140 fb−1 as on-shell 4ℓ events are included in performing these scans. The exclusion of the no off-shell hypothesis is consistent with 3.6 s.d. in both panels. Credit: The CMS Collaboration.

The discovery of the fundamental particle associated with the Higgs field was made in 2012 as part of the ATLAS andCMS experiments. Research teams around the world have been trying to understand the properties of the particle since it was discovered.

The first evidence of the off-shell contributions to the production of Z boson pairs has been gathered by the large group of researchers involved in theCMS experiment. Their findings are in line with predictions.

If you consider all the different states of a collection of particles, their probabilities must always add up to 1 regardless of when you look at it. The so-called unitarity bounds are imposed on the probabilities of particle interactions by this statement.

Physicists have predicted since the 1970s that when pairs of heavy vector bosons Z or W are produced, typical restrictions at high energy would be violated. Over the past ten years, theoretical physics calculations show that the occurrence of the Higgs boson contributions at high energies should be measurable.

It has been shown that the total decay width of the Higgs boson can be determined using these high-electron-volts.

The paper had two objectives, one of which was to look for the presence of contributions to heavy diboson production at high energies.

The second data collection run of the LHC data was analyzed by the CMS collaboration. They focused on events in which pairs of Z bosons were produced and then decay into either four charged leptons or two charged leptons.

These two patterns are the most sensitive to the production of heavy pairs of bosons, according to previous analyses. The team hoped to get more reliable results by analyzing events that matched the patterns.

"We observed the first evidence of the contributions in the production of Z boson pairs at high energies with a statistical significance of more than 3 standard deviations," Li said. The result supports a mechanism that preserves unitarity in heavy diboson production.

In addition to gathering evidence of contributions to ZZ production, theCMS collaboration was able to improve existing measurement of the total decay width or lifetime The measurement was thought to be impossible 10 years ago due to the narrow width of the particle.

The result was 3.2 mega-electron volts with an upper error of 2.4 mega-electron volts and a lower error of 1.7 mega-electronvolt. There is still room for a future measurement with even greater precision to deviate from the predicted result.

The recent work by the collaboration offers new insight about the properties of the boson, as well as showing its contribution to the production of Z boson pairs. The researchers plan to use new data and advanced analysis techniques in their next studies to explore this fascinating particle.

While our results have reached a statistical significance beyond the threshold of 3 standard deviations, more data is needed to be able to claim a discovery

The third data collection run is expected to last until the end of the century. The new data collected as part of the third round of data collection will allow the collaboration to measure the width of the particle with even greater precision.

The analysis of high-energy events with four charged leptons from the data will not be included in the analysis.

The recent preliminary results from the ATLAS Collaboration show an independent confirmation of the evidence, so we hope that the two analyses can be combined to provide the best.

Evidence of its off-shell contributions to ZZ production can be found in the measurement of the Higgs boson width.

The conference is indico.cern.ch.

Journal information: Nature Physics

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