Posted on 11/26/2022 6:35:33 PM PST by BenLurkin
Since the 1970s, physicists have predicted that when pairs of heavy vector bosons Z or W are produced, typical restrictions at high energies would be violated, unless a Higgs boson was contributing to the production of these pairs. Over the past ten years, theoretical physics calculations showed that the occurrence of these Higgs boson contributions at high energies should be measurable using existing data collected by the LHC.
As part of their recent study, the CMS collaboration analyzed some of the data collected between 2015 and 2018, as part of the second data collection run of the LHC. They specifically focused on events characterized by the production of pairs of Z bosons, which subsequently decayed into either four charged leptons (i.e., electrons or muons) or two charged leptons and two neutrinos.
Past experimental analyses suggest that these two unique patterns are the most sensitive to the production of heavy pairs of bosons at high energies. By analyzing events that matched these patterns, therefore, the team hoped to gather clearer and more reliable results.
In addition to gathering evidence of Higgs boson contributions to ZZ production, the CMS collaboration was able to significantly improve existing measurements of the Higgs boson's total decay width or lifetime. The measurement they collected was believed to be unattainable 10 years ago, given the narrow width of the particle (i.e., 4.1 mega-electron volts according to predictions from the standard model of particle physics).
The third data collection run of the LHC started this year and is expected to continue until the end of 2025. Sarica, Yuan, and the rest of the CMS collaboration have already started preparations that will allow them to measure the Higgs boson's width with even greater precision using the new data collected as part of this third round of data collection.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
At first, I thought the title said “bison.” LOL
I read bosom.
Getting old is no fun, but it beats the alternative.
Thanks BenLurkin!
*PING* to the others and anyone else interested (who’s got the Physics Ping list?)
Well I’m prob lost at sea here but I alway wonder if something that cannot sustain it’s energy and mass and disintegrates, effectively giving the impression of disappearing is the explanation behind a ghost.
I am prob way off but that is how I kind of understand this Higgs Boson thing.
This an excellent piece of work...
Particularly since they, basically, went deep into the millions of terabytes of data laying dormant in the LHC boneyard and laid the groundwork for some exciting future studies now that the LHC is up & running again...
This is similar to what still happens from deep dives into the previously-collected mountains of Hubble telescope data...
Then there is the JWST data that is now being collected at such a rate and detail that much of it will still be getting analyzed and published and/or used for Doctoral theses 10 years from now...
I guess that the DUNE experiment will, in a few years, be in the same type of position and start a deluge of exciting papers on neutrinos...
I like bosoms better than bison!
There is still so much to learn about the subatomic universe
This is remindful of one of the lesser-known comments from Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."
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