The ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN today published observations of a new particle in the search for the Higgs boson in the journal Physics Letters B.
Is the particle a Higgs boson of maximum simplicity, as predicted by the 40-year-old standard model of particle physics? Or is it something more complex and interesting that will point towards a deeper, more complete theory? Physicists hope and expect that the LHC will give them some answers over the next few years. But they are already honing their sales pitches for a machine to follow the LHC - a 'Higgs factory' that would illuminate such a theory with measurements far more precise than the LHC can provide. Read more
The Higgs boson-like particle whose discovery was announced on 4 July looks significantly more certain to exist. The particle has been the subject of a decades-long hunt as the last missing piece of physics' Standard Model, explaining why matter has mass. Now Higgs-hunting teams at the Large Hadron Collider report more than "5.8 sigma" levels of certainty it exists. Read more
Title: Higgs Couplings after the Discovery Authors: Tilman Plehn, Michael Rauch
Following the ATLAS and CMS analyses presented around ICHEP 2012 we determine the individual Higgs couplings. The new data allow us to specifically test the effective coupling to photons. We find no significant deviation from the Standard Model in any of the Higgs couplings.
"If I were a betting man, I would bet that it is the Higgs. But we can't say that definitely yet. It is very much a smoking duck that walks and quacks like the Higgs. But we now have to open it up and look inside before we can say that it is indeed the Higgs" - Oliver Buchmueller, research team senior physicist at CERN
Mounting evidence that the Higgs boson exists is a "triumph" for particle physics and could help answer other questions about the Universe, according to a Durham University expert. Read more