The discovery and measurements of a Higgs boson

Abstract

In July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a Higgs-like boson, a new heavy particle at a mass more than 130 times the mass of a proton. Since then, further data have revealed its properties to be strikingly similar to those of the Standard Model Higgs boson, a particle expected from the mechanism introduced almost 50 years ago by six theoreticians including British physicists Peter Higgs from Edinburgh University and Tom Kibble from Imperial College London. The discovery is the culmination of a truly remarkable scientific journey and undoubtedly the most significant scientific discovery of the twenty-first century so far. Its experimental confirmation turned out to be a monumental task requiring the creation of an accelerator and experiments of unprecedented capability and complexity, designed to discern the signatures that correspond to the Higgs boson. Thousands of scientists and engineers, in each of the ATLAS and CMS teams, came together from all four corners of the world to make this massive discovery possible.

Disjointed Equivalence of Gravitational and Inertial Mass

“…The particle that mediates this field is the Higgs boson [11] [17] [18] [19] [20]. The CERN findings of 2012-4 produced a signature at 125GeV consistent with such a boson [21] [22] [23]. However the mechanism for production of the Higgs boson is still unclear [24] [25].…”

Before, behind and beyond the discovery of the Higgs boson

“…The actual discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 is discussed in the paper by Gianotti & Virdee [7], which reviews many of the distinctive experimental signatures of this particle that contributed to this discovery. Their paper also describes how many of the characteristic properties of the new particle have subsequently been verified and measured, leading to the Nobel Prize Committee's judgement on its nature.…”