New particle at mass about 150 GeV?

Tommaso tells about the newest result from CDF. The eprint of CDF collaboration (the first name in the long list of names is T. Aaltonen who comes from Finland) reports evidence for a new resonance like state, presumably a boson with mass around 150 GeV. The interpretation as Higgs is definitely excluded. Nature seems to be mercilessly humiliating the arrogant theoreticians;-). Tommaso promised to represent further comments already today and we are eagerly waiting! Also this posting is expected to develop in steps.

This posting has been updated a couple of times and reflects the evolution of my confused picture about what is involved. As I said: Nature seems to mercilessly humiliate arrogant theorists, me included. I shall confess below all my silly mistakes: enjoy!

First impressions

For the inhabitant of the TGD Universe the most obvious identification of the new particle would be as an exotic weak boson. The TGD based explanation of family replication phenomenon predicts that gauge bosons come in singlets and octets of a dynamical SU(3) symmetry associated with three fermion generations (fermion families correspond to topologies of partonic wormhole throats characterized by the number of handles attached to sphere). Exotic Z or W boson could be in question.

If the symmetry breaking between octet and singlet is due to different value of p-adic prime alone then the mass would come as an multiple of half-octave of the mass of Z or W. For W boson one would obtain 160 GeV consistent with 150 GeV. Z would give 180 GeV mass which is perhaps too high. The Weinberg angle could be however different for the singlet and octet so that the naive p-adic scaling need not hold true exactly.

Note that the strange forward backward asymmetry in the production of top quark pairs might be understood in terms of exotic gluon octet whose existence means neutral flavor changing currents.

One day later

Bloggers have reacted intensively to the possibility of a new particle. Tommaso has now a nice detailed analysis about the intricacies of the analysis of the data leading to the identification of the bump. Also Lubos and Resonaances have commented the new particle. Its existence have been actually known for months in physics circles. The flow of eprints to arXiv explaining the new particle has begun.

People are already now talking about an entirely new interaction. I have done this for more than decade! Actually I have talked about entire hierarchy of scaled up variants of hadron physics (Aaaarrrrgggghhh!; do not get scared: it was an expression of extreme irritation by some colleague who believes that physics proceeds by infinitesimal steps) associated with Mersenne primes and strongly suggested by p-adic length scale hypothesis!

Why an exotic weak boson a la TGD cannot be in question

From the additional data bits leaking via the blogs I can conclude that the new particle cannot be exotic weak boson but more plausibly the basic signature for what I call M₈₉ hadron physics and for which the proton mass is by a factor 512 higher than for the ordinary hadron physics. Pions are abundantly produced in any hadron physics and the signature of any hadron physics are the weak and electromagnetic decays of pions.

The extremely important data bit that I did not have yesterday is that the decays to two jets favor quark pairs over lepton pairs. A model assuming exotic Z -called Z^'- produced together with W and decaying preferentially to quark pairs has been proposed as an explanation. Neither ordinary nor the exotic weak gauge bosons of TGD Universe have this kind of preference to decay to quark pairs so that my first guess was wrong.

The resonance appears to be produced in association with W boson. Now comes the confession! This led on my side to an extremely stupid misunderstanding lasting for weeks. I thought that it is the 150 GeV bump which decays to W boson and dijet and forgot to check this when more data came. Stupid me! Ironically, it turned out that later evidence for the production of Wjj state in a decay of resonance with mass slightly below 150 GeV emerged so that the stupid error might have contained a seed of truth.

Remark: It has turned out that bump does not disappear and the most recent analysis assigns 4.1 sigma signicance to it. The mass of the bump would be at 147+/- 5 GeV. Also some evidence that the entire Wjj system results in the decay of a resonance with mass slightly below 300 GeV has emerged.

Is a scaled up copy of hadron physics in question?

The natural explanation for preference of quark pairs would be that strong interactions are somehow involved. This suggests a state analogous to a charged pion decaying to W boson and two gluons annihilating to the quark pair (box diagram). This kind of proposal is indeed made in Technicolor at the Tevatron and has as its analog second fundamental prediction of TGD that p-adically scaled up variants of hadron physics should exist and one of them is waiting to be discovered in TeV region. This prediction emerged already for about 15 years ago as I carried out p-adic mass calculations and discovered that Mersenne primes define fundamental mass scales (see this).

Sidestep: Also colored excitations of leptons and therefore leptohadron physics are predicted (see this). What is amusing that CDF discovered towards the end of 2008 what became known as CDF anomaly giving support for tau-pions. The evidence for electro-pions and mu-pions had emerged already earlier (for details see the link above). All these facts have been buried underground because they simply do not fit to the standard model wisdom. TGD based view about dark matter is indeed needed to circumvent the fact that the lifetimes of weak bosons do not allow new light particles. There is a long series of postings in my blog about CDF anomaly: see for instance this. At that time I did of course my best to inform colleagues about the predicted scaled up version of hadron physics. The only visible outcome of my efforts was that I lost my right to use the computer of Helsinki University since finnish colleagues got really angry! In any case, it would be nice if CDF would have discovered two new hadron physics without even knowing it!

Back to the topic: TGD indeed predicts p-adically scaled up copy of hadron physics in TeV region and the lightest hadron of this physics is a pion like state produced abundantly in the hadronic reactions. Ordinary hadron physics corresponds to Mersenne prime M₁₀₇=2¹⁰⁷-1 whereas the scaled up copy would correspond to M₈₉. The mass scale would be 512 times the mass scale 1 GeV of ordinary hadron physics so that the mass of M₈₉ proton should be about 512 GeV. The mass of the M₈₉ pion would be by a naive scaling 71.7 GeV and about two times smaller than the observed mass in the range 120-160 GeV and with the most probable value around 145 GeV as Lubos reports. 2*71.7 GeV = 143.4 GeV would be the guess of the believer in the p-adic scaling hypothesis and the assumption that pion mass is solely due to quarks. It is important to notice that this scaling works precisely only if CKM mixing matrix is same for the scaled up quarks and if charged pion consisting of u-d quark pair is in question. The well-known current algebra hypothesis that pion is massless in the first approximation would mean that pion mass is solely due to the quark masses whereas proton mass is dominated by other contributions if one assumes that also valence quarks are current quarks with rather small masses. The alternative which also works is that valence quarks are constituent quarks with much higher mass scale.

The killer prediction for the scaled up hadron physics hypothesis are gamma pairs with gamma energy in the range 60-80 GeV. The naivest assumption would give gamma energy of 71.7 GeV. My guess based on deep ignorance about the experimental side is that this signature should be easily testable: one should scan the energy range 60-80 GeV for mono-chromatic gamma pairs.

The simplest identification of the 150 GeV resonance

The picture about CDF resonance has become clearer during the last weeks (see the postings Theorists vs. the CDF bump and More details about the CDF bump. One of the results is that leptophobic Z' can explain only 60 per cent of the production rate.

Situation is coming also clearer for me. A really cold shower came as I found an incredibly silly misunderstanding in my earlier model which assumed that Wjj results from 150 GeV resonance that I identified as charged pion of M₈₉ hadron physics. It is of course jj which results from 150 GeV bump. This is unforgivable sloppiness. Ironically, there is now however evidence that my erratic assumption was correct in the sense that the entire Wjj might results from a resonance with mass slightly below 300 GeV. This suggests that its mass is in good accuracy two times the mass of 150 GeV bump for which best estimate is 147+/-5 GeV.

This brings in mind the explanation for the two and half year old CDF anomaly in which tau-pions with masses coming as octaves of basic tau-pion played a key role (masses were in good approximation 2^k× m(&pi_τ), m(&pi_τ)≈ 2m_&tau:, k=1,2. The same mechanism would explain the discrepancy between the DAMA and Xenon100 experiments. Could this mechanism be at work also now so that 300 GeV bump would correspond to the first octave M₈₉ pion which would have mass 150 GeV. This would mean that the one first octave of charged M₈₉ pion decaying to W and neutral M₈₉ pion with mass slightly below 150 GeV in turn decaying to two jets. Parity conservation would force the decay via emission of W boson. Parity conservation would prevent the decays to two pions. The nasty question is why the octaves of pion are realized as resonances in ordinary hadron physics. One could indeed imagine the mother particle to be ρ meson of M₈₉ hadron physics: in this case derivative coupling would make the decay rate small near the threshold. One can also ask whether the lightest state of M₈₉ pion could be actually around 73 GeV as the naivest possible scaling of pion mass predicts. If so then the situation would be very similar to that in the case of tau-pion.

Connection with the top pair backward-forward asymmetry?

The predicted exotic octet of gluons proposed as an explanation of the anomalous backward-forward asymmetry in top pair production could actually correspond to the gluons of the scaled up variant of hadron physics. M₁₀₇ hadron physics would correspond to ordinary gluons only and M₈₉ only to the exotic octet of gluons only so that a strict scaled up copy would not be in question. Could it be that given Mersenne prime tolerates only single hadron physics or leptohadron physics?

In any case, this would give a connection with the TGD based explanation of the backward-forward asymmetry in the production of top pairs. In the collision incoming quark of proton and antiquark of antiproton would topologically condense at M₈₉ hadronic space-time sheet and scatter by the exchange of exotic octet of gluons: the exchange between quark and antiquark would not destroy the information about directions of incoming and outgoing beams as s-channgel annihilation would do and one would obtain the large asymmetry.

Yesterday I generated irritation in learned colleagues by writing: "It would be nice if LHC would add to the Particle Data Tables both gluonic and electroweak octets and TGD to the text books;-)". Remaining in super-optimistic mood I would like to induce even more irritation by writing: "It would be nice if LHC would add to the Particle Data Tables not only exotic gluonic and electroweak octets but entire new hadron physics - and as a side product TGD to the text books;-;.). Good physics is fun! Enjoy!

For more about new physics predicted by TGD see the chapter p-Adic mass calculations: New Physics of "p-Adic Length Scale Hypothesis and Dark Matter Hierarchy". For reader's convenience I have added a short pdf article Is the new boson reported by CDF pion of M₈₉ hadron physics? at my homepage.