Beyond Higgs: new findings (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 06, 2018, 20:47 (2363 days ago) @ David Turell

The Higgs has given off top quarks and an anti-top quark, heavy particles:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/new-higgs-boson-observations-reveal-c...

"Today physicists reported an important observation that could help us understand this fascinating particle and clarify the origins of the mass. Using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, located at the CERN laboratory on the French–Swiss border, scientists observed collisions that produced not only Higgs bosons, but also a top quark and its antimatter counterpart, an anti–top quark.

"These quarks are the heaviest known fundamental particles and had never before been seen along with Higgs bosons as the products of a collision. I am a scientist on one of the teams behind the announcement and we are all very excited. Until these measurements we had only indirect evidence of how top quarks and Higgs bosons interact. Now we can see these dealings up close.

***

"The reason for this is subtle. The Higgs boson’s own mass comes from two sources: one part arises directly from its interactions with the Higgs field, but there is another indirect contribution. Like all subatomic particles, the Higgs boson can briefly transform into other particles—for instance, top quarks, W and Z bosons, and even pairs of Higgs bosons. While in this fluctuated state these transformed particles can also interact with the Higgs field and indirectly contribute to the Higgs boson’s mass.

"This contribution to the Higgs mass is expected to be enormous, unless the effects of the top quark and the W, Z and Higgs bosons can cancel out this mass very precisely. For now that seems unlikely (and certainly unexplained), so this presents a serious mystery. Thus, it is important to understand the interaction between Higgs bosons and top quarks to try to shed some light on this pressing conundrum.

"Aside from the unanswered questions regarding the mass of the Higgs boson itself, there is another reason to be interested in the relationship between the top quark and the Higgs boson. The top quark is the particle that interacts most with the Higgs field—we know this because it is the heaviest known particle, and particles gain mass according to how strongly they deal with the field.

"The intimate relationship between the top quark and the Higgs may offer us a favored route for discovering new particles in nature. Because of the mystery remaining around how the Higgs generates mass, it is entirely likely that undiscovered particles will first appear in collisions in which the Higgs field plays a prominent role. Thus, events in which the top quark and Higgs boson simultaneously appear are an attractive laboratory to investigate new physics."

Comment: Even though a bigger LHC is needed for higher energy particles, discoveries within the standard model, discoveries continue.