BGU Physics Department

Colloquium, May 10th, 2012


Did the LHC discover the Higgs?


Yoram Rozen, Technion
On December 13, at the end of the 2011 running year, both the ATLAS and the CMS collaborations made their Higgs search results public in a single joint seminar. The two collaborations laid out their multichannel analyses in what seemed like an endless set of statistical statements. Furthermore, the reluctance to provide a"yes-or-no" answer fueled some journalists to report the discovery of the "god particle" while other decided that the LHC has rejected the Higgs mechanism. In view of this confusion, I will discuss the results shown at CERN but not before an introduction to the topic will be presented. A description of the  Higgs mechanism and the Standard Model need for it will be followed by an explanation of the search for the Higgs particle and the statistical statements made.