HackerPapers

arXiv:1207.7235hep-ex

Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC

The CMS Collaboration

Abstract

Results are presented from searches for the standard model Higgs boson in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 and 8 TeV in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the LHC, using data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 inverse femtobarns at 7 TeV and 5.3 inverse femtobarns at 8 TeV. The search is performed in five decay modes: gamma gamma, ZZ, WW, tau tau, and b b-bar. An excess of events is observed above the expected background, with a local significance of 5.0 standard deviations, at a mass near 125 GeV, signalling the production of a new particle. The expected significance for a standard model Higgs boson of that mass is 5.8 standard deviations. The excess is most significant in the two decay modes with the best mass resolution, gamma gamma and ZZ; a fit to these signals gives a mass of 125.3 +/- 0.4 (stat.) +/- 0.5 (syst.) GeV. The decay to two photons indicates that the new particle is a boson with spin different from one.

arXiv comments
Submitted to Phys. Lett. B
Journal reference
Phys. Lett. B 716 (2012) 30
DOI
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2012.08.021
Subjects
hep-exHigh Energy Physics, Experiment

On Hacker News

Linked by 4 identifiable commenters in 4 comments across 4 threads, from Aug 2012 to Jan 2021.

Comments linking this paper, per year.

Discussed in comments4 threads

  1. Are Experts Real? 1 comment

    • That's a good question. You're right that a random grad student in a lab can't replicate, e.g., the discovery of the Higgs boson! However, at least for the Higgs (and I believe this is standard for most such large experiments), there were actually two different groups using two…

      losvedirView on HNParent context

  2. Neutrino experiment reveals inconsistency in how matter and antimatter behave 1 comment

    • 1) Typos fixed. 2) "That's not true. You can see plots in the 2011 and 2012 papers that give these calculations as a function of mass." - Can you explain what you mean via figure 1 in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7235 ? - I don't see the relevance of calculating…

      nonbelView on HNParent context

  3. Higgs Papers Out 1 comment

    • Better link to the arXiv abstract, ie http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7214 You also did not link the accompanying paper from CMS http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7235

      cygxView on HNParent context

  4. Observation of a new particle in the search for the Higgs boson 1 comment

    • That's the hope. New result from the Tevatron just showed that this thing appears to decay to matter, too (not just gauge bosons) http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0512051. It is looking very Standard Model like. An outside hope is that it doesn't couple to leptons. The CMS Higgs to…

      dictusView on HNParent context

Submitted to Hacker News

Connected through shared HN threads, not inferred similarity or a recommendation.