Monday, August 22, 2011

Higgs still not seen

The first results about Lepton-Photon 2011 have appeared. Both Lubos and Phil show some plots ATLAS. Also CMS has given news release about Higgs search results in Lepton-Photon 2011 conference. The search of CMS involves decays of Higgs to pairs of photons, W bosons, or Z bosons or to tau lepton - or b quark pairs. The mass ranges 145-216 GeV, 226-288 GeV and 310-400 GeV for Higgs are excluded. Standard model Higgs boson is excluded in the range 144-440 GeV with 90 per cent confidence level. A modest excess of events is still observed below 145 GeV. The results are very similar to those of ATLAS. One can say that Higgs (or whatever it is) signal has weakened. Tommaso reports the results and gives a very interesting graph representing the observed and theoretical probability (p-value) that the data are compatible with the background (assuming of course that Higgs is there!) as function of Higgs mass. The theoretical p-value is much smaller than the observed. Around 145 GeV the p-value has however a downwards peak extending below 2 sigma (below than 10-2). The theoretical p-value is below 3 sigma and by more than order of magnitude smaller than the experimental value. Something might be there but it does not seem to be Higgs! If it is not the Higgs there are no problems since this something would be produced and decay with different rates. To state it again: the presence of a clear deviation which is too small for Higgs could be seen as a direct indication that something else than Higgs is there.

That's it. Somewhat disappointingly, the situation remains still open. Recall that TGD predicts that all Higgs components become longitudinal polarizations of massless particles in massivation. Entire scaled up hadron physics would replace Higgs in TGD Universe and guarantee unitarity. The pion of M89 hadron physics should have mass not far from 145 GeV and the above discussed graph enhances the optimism of TGD phanatic;-). It is nice to see the pieces of the puzzle to find their place.

In Quantum diaries of CERN there is an article What if it's not the Higgs?: maybe the title of the posting is inspired by some anticipation of the results represented by Tommaso. According to this article, the theories trying to explain matter antimatter asymmetry and produce quantum gravity have not been very successful. Typically they predict Higgs, Z' and (exotic) graviton decaying to b quark pair. Z' has appeared also as explanation of 145 GeV CDF bump (not seen by D0) about which everyone except me has been silent: the reason I cannot keep my mouth shut is that in TGD Universe the interpretation as M89 pion is natural and there are also indications for M89 ρ and ω with predicted masses. The decay characteristics distinguish between Higgs and Z' and also the decay to two gammas is something distinguishing pion like pseudoscalar state from Higgs. It seems that we must just patiently wait.

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