## Conformal Standard Model is consistent with the observed Higgs particle

12/04/2013

Robert Garisto is an Editor of Physical Review Letters, the flagship journal of American Physical Society and the one with the highest impact factor in physics. I follow him on twitter (@RobertGaristo) and he points out interesting papers that appear in the journal he works in. This time I read the following

and turned immediately my attention to the linked paper: This one (if you have not a subscription you can find it at arxiv) by Tom Steele and Zhi-Wei Wang showing, with the technique of Padè approximants and an average method how to compute the exact mass of Higgs particle from Coleman-Weinberg mechanism arriving to estimate the ninth order contribution. This is so beacuse they need a stronger coupling with respect to the original Higgs mechanism. They reach an upper bound of 141 GeV for the mass and 0.352 for the self-coupling while they get the mass of 124 GeV for a self-coupling of 0.23. This shows unequivocally that the quadratic term, the one generating the hierarchy problem, is absolutely not needed and the Standard Model, in its conformal formulation, is able to predict the mass of the Higgs particle. Besides, the production rates are identical to the original model but differ for the production of Higgs pairs and this is where one could tell which way nature has chosen. This implies that, at the moment, one has no way to be sure this is the right solution but we have to wait till 2015 after LHC upgrade. So, once again, the precise measurements of these decay rates are essential to tell if we are coping with the original Higgs mechanism or something different or if we need two more years to answer this question. In any case, it is possible that Nobel committee has to wait yet before to take a decision. However, in the sixties that formulation was the only possible and any other solution would have been impossible to discover for the lack of knowledge. They did a great job even if we will prove a different mechanism at work as they provided credibility to the Standard Model and people could trust it.

Finally, I would like to note how the value of the coupling is consistent with my recent estimation where I get 0.36 for the self-interaction. I get different production rates and I would be just curious to see how pictures from ATLAS and CMS would change comparing differently from the Standard Model in order to claim no other Higgs-like particle is seen.

What we can conclude is that the conformal Standard Model is in even more better shape than before and just a single Higgs particle would be needed. An astonishing result.

Steele, T., & Wang, Z. (2013). Is Radiative Electroweak Symmetry Breaking Consistent with a 125 GeV Higgs Mass? Physical Review Letters, 110 (15) DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.151601

Marco Frasca (2013). Revisiting the Higgs sector of the Standard Model arXiv arXiv: 1303.3158v1

## Much closer to the Standard Model

18/03/2013

Today, the daily from arxiv yields a contribution from John Ellis and Tevong You analyzing new data presented at Aspen and Moriond the last two weeks by CMS and ATLAS about Higgs particle (see here). Their result can be summarized in the following figure

that is really impressive. This means that the updated data coming out from LHC constraints even more the Higgs particle found so far to be the Standard Model one. Another impressive conclusion they are able to draw is that the couplings appear to be proportional to the masses as it should be expected from a well-behaved Higgs particle. But they emphasize that this is “a” Higgs particle and the scenario is well consistent with supersymmetry. Citing them:

The data now impose severe constraints on composite alternatives to the elementary Higgs boson of the Standard Model. However, they do not yet challenge the predictions of supersymmetric models, which typically make predictions much closer to the Standard Model values. We therefore infer that the Higgs coupling measurements, as well as its mass, provide circumstantial support to supersymmetry as opposed to these minimal composite alternatives, though this inference is not conclusive.

They say that further progress on the understanding of this particle could be granted after the upgraded LHC will run and, indeed, nobody is expecting some dramatic change into this scenario from the data at hand.

John Ellis, & Tevong You (2013). Updated Global Analysis of Higgs Couplings arXiv arXiv: 1303.3879v1

## A Higgs particle but which one?

14/03/2013

After Moriond conference last week, and while Moriond QCD and Aspen conferences are running yet, an important conclusion can be drawn and it is the one given in this CERN press release. The particle announced on 4th July last year is for certain a Higgs particle as it has spin 0, positive parity and couples almost like the Standard Model Higgs particle to all others. The agreement with Standard Model is embarrassingly increasing as cumulated data since last year are analyzed. Today, CMS will also update their results for the decay $H\rightarrow\gamma\gamma$ and we will know if the small deviation observed by ATLAS will be confirmed. It is true that they see such a deviation with a larger dataset but, rather to increase, it has slightly diminished and this is not really encouraging.

So far, no other particle has been seen and no new physics beyond the Standard Model is seen at the horizon. There is some people pushing for a conclusive assignment of the nature of this boson to the vanilla Higgs particle postulated in the sixties. But it is really too early yet to draw such a conclusion and I have explained why in a paper of mine appeared today on arxiv (see here). Indeed, a formulation of the Higgs field is possible such that, at the tree level, coincides with the original Higgs field (a Higgs impostor). This is due to the existence of exact solutions of the equations of motion of such a field (see here). The relevant point to tell which one is realized in nature is through the decay rate in WW and ZZ and, with the current data, there is agreement for both yet. But, being amplitudes exponentially damped, higher excited states of the Higgs boson cannot be easily seen presently and their eventual observation appears as a statistical fluctuation yet. This can be evaluated quantitatively. It is important because the ZZ decay is sensible to higher masses and displays some peaks that reveal themselves as statistical fluctuations. Increasing the number of events could turn these peaks into real observations.

The interesting point here is that we are moving form the discovery moment to the study phase with a lot of room for improving measurements on this Higgs particle. But the analysis for the existence of higher excited states, Higgs’ brothers, is just at its infancy.

Update: This the analogous figure from ATLAS while the figure for $H\rightarrow\gamma\gamma$ from CMS agrees quite well with the Standard Model: $0.8\pm 0.3$.

Marco Frasca (2013). Revisiting the Higgs sector of the Standard Model arXiv arXiv: 1303.3158v1

Marco Frasca (2009). Exact solutions of classical scalar field equations J.Nonlin.Math.Phys.18:291-297,2011 arXiv: 0907.4053v2

## Fabiola Gianotti at Accademia dei Lincei

11/01/2013

On November 7th last year, Fabiola Gianotti, spokesperson of ATLAS experiment at CERN and one of the discoverers of the Higgs-like boson, has been nominated fellow of the Accademia dei Lincei. This is one of the oldest and most prestigious scientific societies that held fellows like Galileo Galilei and Enrico Fermi. Today, she held a public conference with fellows both of moral and scientific classes about “The Higgs boson and our life”. Of course, I was there to see and listen to her personally. As I entered the room, I asked “excuse me” to three people blocking my passage to the chair. When I sat, I looked at them and I realized who were: Carlo di Castro, Francesco de Martini and Giovanni Jona-Lasinio. They were all my former professors. Also Giorgio Parisi was there and later Luciano Maiani entered the audience. Undoubtedly, the audience was truly remarkable.

Lamberto Maffei, president of the Accademia, introduced Gianotti through her main achievements and awards. I would like to remember that she gave the money of the Fundamental Physics Prize for student grants.

The aim of this conference was to convey to all fellows of the Accademia and public at large what was behind the discovery of the Higgs-like particle announced on July 4th last year. For me has been a good chance to hear, from one of the persons mastering this matter, a talk addressed to everybody without the use of technical jargon and using several nice images. Gianotti has shown a very fine gift for this. I would like to reassure my readers that she used comic sans.

By my side, I was proud to hear that 1400 scientists working at CERN are Italians and that an Italian company, Ansaldo Superconduttori Genova, is responsible for one third of the realization of the superconductors at LHC and are also installed in ATLAS detector. At CERN it is working  a great majority of young people. Gianotti said that it does not matter if you are a graduate student just entered the team. If your idea is good it is taken and applied. This is what makes scientific enterprise quite different from other realities and renders it so effective. Ideas count more than any authority.

Gianotti pointed out how difficult the situation is for Italy as we have a lot of young people leaving the country for academic positions at foreign universities while there are very few students coming in Italy to do research. Also, reduced budgets from our government with nonsensical cuts can produce a gap between generations of a line that produced excellent people. Recovering would be difficult then.

Turning attention to the discovery, I would like to emphasize that Gianotti repeated more and more times that the only certainty is that Standard Model, a beautiful theory, is verified with very high precision without no hint of breaking so far. But she warned the audience that we know that it must be overcome motivating this mostly from evidence of dark matter. The new particle, she said “Higgs-like”, resemble more and more the one originally postulated by Peter Higgs et al. but they have a lot of data to analyse yet and cannot be certain it is that one yet. They hope to clarify this matter with these other data (Moriond?). She used an interesting image to describe the Higgs field to common people and then turned to the technical one to recover with respect to the formidable physicists were present there. Who speaks Italian can appreciate this video: Gianotti, Tonelli and Bertolucci explain Higgs field with children on similar lines.

The reason why she referred to our life is that most people generally ask “Why?”. Why all this effort to catch such a particle? She gave the beautiful example of J. J. Thompson and the discovery of the electron. When this happened both Thompson’s life and that of his neighbourhood did not change at all. But with the discovery of electronics and its application we all know now what all that has meant. For the Higgs particle can happen the same. From the discovery to its possible applications can pass some time and we need fundamental physics as a priori we cannot foresee the consequences but when they appear can be devastating and change our life definitely and forever for better. Gianotti said that without fundamental research, applied research dries up and eventually dies causing serious troubles to the economy of a country. I completely share her view. She also showed how hadron therapy and pet imaging were by-products of such endeavour.

Questions took more time than expected as the talk was really exciting and several people asked questions. She took this chance to recognize her debt with Ettore Fiorini, in the audience, that introduced her to particle physics and taught her a lot about it. Also Giorgio Salvini was present and asked for beyond LHC. Gianotti said that they hope to have LHC running for more than twenty years as also happened to other accelerator facilities. Salvini participated to most of the history of particle physics since Fermi’s time. He was in the experiment at CERN that produced W and Z particles for the first time with Carlo Rubbia. Francesco de Martini asked a technical question: Has Higgs particle cosmological implications? He was referring to a paper by Lee Smolin that claims that, due to this field, geometry should change from a Riemann to a Weyl one. Gianotti answered immediately that the cosmological implications for the Higgs particle are enormous. The reason is that this is the first scalar particle ever discovered and inflation, the main mechanism in the Standard Model of cosmology to solve the problem of the homogeneity of the universe, has as a basic ingredient a scalar field. CERN discovery shows once again that the idea of inflation is in the right direction. de Martini was not satisfied with the answer turning back to the Smolin’s paper. Then Gianotti asked support to Giorgio Parisi, Parisi is one of the greatest Italian theoretical physicist, that confirmed Gianotti’s answer and said that, even if he is not an expert in the field of general relativity, people working in this research area have devised everything but the kitchen sink and so he would not be surprised if something like this was conceived.

In the end, a very beautiful talk from a great physicist. I would like to paraphrase what Gianotti said about Higgs and its light mass: Thanks Nature for giving us Gianotti!

## Where does mass come from?

16/12/2012

After CERN’s updates (well recounted here, here and here) producing no real news but just some concern about possible Higgs cloning, I would like to discuss here some mathematical facts about what one should expect about mass generation and why we should not be happy with these results, now coming out on a quarterly basis.

The scenario we are facing so far is one with a boson particle resembling more and more the Higgs particle appearing in the original formulation of the Standard Model. No trace is seen of anything else at higher energies, no evidence of supersymmetry. It appears like no new physics is hiding here rather for it we will have to wait eventually the upgrade of LHC that will start its runs on 2015.

I cannot agree with all of this and this is not the truth at all. The reason to not believe all this is strictly based on theoretical arguments and properties of partial differential equations. We are aware that physicists can be skeptical also about mathematics even if this is unacceptable as mathematics has no other way than being true or false. There is nothing like a half truth but there are a lot of theoretical physicists trusting on it. I have always thought that being skeptical on mathematics is just an excuse to avoid to enter into other work. There could always be the risk that one discovers it is correct and then has to support it.

The point is the scalar field. A strong limitation we have to face when working in quantum field theory is that only small coupling can be managed. No conclusive analysis can be drawn when a coupling is just finite and also lattice computations produce confusion. It seems like small coupling only can exist and all the theory we build are in the hope that nature is benign and yields nothing else than that. For the Higgs field is the same. All our analysis are based on this, the hierarchy problem comes out from this. Just take any of your textbook on which you built your knowledge of this matter and you will promptly realize that nothing else is there. Peschin and Schroeder, in their really excellent book, conclude that strong coupling cannot exist in quantum field theory and the foundation of this argument arises from renormalization group. Nature has only small couplings.

Mathematics, a product of nature, has not just small couplings and nobody can impede a mathematician to take these equations and try to analyze them with a coupling running to infinity. Of course, I did it and somebody else tried to understand this situation and the results make the situation rather embarrassing.

These reflections sprang from a paper appeared yesterday on arxiv (see here). In a de Sitter space there is a natural constant having the dimension of energy and this is the Hubble constant (in natural units). It is an emerging result that a massless scalar field with a quartic interaction in such a space develops a mass. This mass goes like $m^2\propto \sqrt{\lambda}H^2$ being $\lambda$ the coupling coming from the self-interaction and $H$ the Hubble constant. But the authors of this paper are forced to turn to the usual small coupling expansion just singling out the zero mode producing the mass. So, great news but back to the normal.

A self-interacting scalar field has the property to get mass by itself. Generally, such a self-interacting field has a potential in the form $\frac{1}{2}\mu^2\phi^2+\frac{\lambda}{4}\phi^4$ and we can have three cases $\mu^2>0$, $\mu^2=0$ and $\mu^2<0$. In all of them the classical equations of motion have an exact massive free solution (see here and Tao’s Dispersive Wiki) when $\lambda$ is finite. These solutions cannot be recovered by any small coupling expansion unless one is able to resum the infinite terms in the series. The cases with $\mu^2\ne 0$ are interesting in that this term gets a correction depending on $\lambda$ and for the case $\mu^2<0$ one can recover a spectrum with a Goldstone excitation and the exact solution is an oscillating one around a finite value different from zero (it never crosses the zero) as it should be for spontaneous breaking of symmetry. But the mass is going like $\sqrt{\lambda}\Lambda^2$ where now $\Lambda$ is just an integration constant. The same happens in the massless case as one recovers a mass going like $m^2\propto\sqrt{\lambda}\Lambda^2$.  We see the deep analogy with the scalar field in a de Sitter space and these authors are correct in their conclusions.

The point here is that the Higgs mechanism, as has been devised in the sixties, entails all the philosophy of “small coupling and nothing else” and so it incurs in all the possible difficulties, not last the hierarchy problem. A modern view about this matter implies that, also admitting $\mu^2<0$ makes sense, we have to expand around a solution for $\lambda$ finite being this physically meaningful rather than try an expansion for a free field. We are not granted that the latter makes sense at all but is just an educated guess.

What does all this imply for LHC results? Indeed, if we limit all the analysis to the coupling of the Higgs field with the other fields in the Standard Model, this is not the best way to say we have observed a true Higgs particle as the one postulated in the sixties. It is just curious that no other excitation is seen beyond the (eventually cloned) 126 GeV boson seen so far but we have a big desert to very high energies. Because the very nature of the scalar field is to have massive solutions as soon as the self-interaction is taken to be finite, this also means that other excited states must be seen. This simply cannot be the Higgs particle, mathematics is saying no.

M. Beneke, & P. Moch (2012). On “dynamical mass” generation in Euclidean de Sitter space arXiv arXiv: 1212.3058v1

Marco Frasca (2009). Exact solutions of classical scalar field equations J.Nonlin.Math.Phys.18:291-297,2011 arXiv: 0907.4053v2

## Higgs: Tevatron confirms CERN findings

07/03/2012

In these days, at Moriond (La Thuile indeed, a great ski station) on Italian Alps, a conference is held (see here). Today is the Higgs day and people at Tevatron confirmed the clues found by CERN and announced last December. Higgs particle mass should be around 125 GeV. This has being reverberated on the media (see here). The evidence found at Tevatron is about two sigma (one percent probability that is not a fluctuation in the data) and so, one cannot claim a discovery and well below the three sigma evidence from CERN. For a final word we will have to wait summer conferences and new data from the restart of LHC at April.

Update: Here is Fermilab press release.

Update: Matt Strassler is pointing out in his blog that ATLAS has now a lower evidence for the Higgs particle than in last December. This seems something like the fluctuation of the last summer. Evidence for this would be now 10%.

## A new year full of promises

03/01/2012

We have left 2011 with a lot of exciting results from experiments. Neutrinos appear to move a bit faster than expected and Higgs provided some glimpses at CERN. Of course, this kind of Higgs appears somewhat boring at first being in the range of what Standard Model expected. But it is really too early to say something for sure. We expect definite answer for the next summer with a lot more data analyzed by people at CERN.

With the new year, I would like to point out to my readers a couple of nice papers that are really worthwhile reading. About CUDA and lattice QCD, my Portuguese friends, Pedro Bicudo and Nuno Cardoso,  made a relevant step beyond and made available their code for working for a generic SU(N) gauge group (see here, their code is here). As I have some time I will try their code. The work of these people is excellent and making their code worldwide available is really helpful for all our community.

Finally, Axel Maas put forward a revision of his very good review paper (see here). Axel gave important contributions to the current understanding of Yang-Mills theory and his paper yields a lucid description of these ideas that rely on a large effort on lattice computations and functional methods. Often, I complain about the fact that the community at large seems to not consider these lines of research reliable yet to work with. This is not true as the results they were able to get give since now sound results to work with and the most important of these are that Yang-Mill theory has indeed a mass gap and that this theory appears to display a running coupling reaching zero lowering momenta, a completely unexpected result that goes against common wisdom but this is just what lattice put out.

So, let me wish to you a great 2012 and I hope to share with you the excitement physics research is promising.

Nuno Cardoso, & Pedro Bicudo (2011). Generating SU(Nc) pure gauge lattice QCD configurations on GPUs with
CUDA and OpenMP arXiv arXiv: 1112.4533v1

Axel Maas (2011). Describing gauge bosons at zero and finite temperature arXiv arXiv: 1106.3942v2

## Glimpses of Higgs

13/12/2011

Finally, after some frantic waiting filled with rumors, we heard the truth from people at CERN. And we discovered that rumors were just right. Evidence is mounting for a Higgs particle at around 120-130 GeV, after new data were accounted for. All these evidences point toward a Standard Model Higgs. But some caution words are needed (see Matt Strassler’s post) as a discovery cannot be claimed yet. ATLAS sees a 3.6 sigma overall evidence but, accounting for look elsewhere effect, this go down to 2.5 sigma while CMS has a similar 2.6 sigma going down to 1.9 with look elsewhere effect. This is not enough to rule out a fluctuations but, anyhow, a strong indication where to point researchers attention for the near future. All the matter will be pinned down later next year. From my side, I just note a possible contradiction between the two experiments as ATLAS keeps on claiming an excess around 500-600 GeV, also with increasing number of data and indeed evidence now goes beyond 2 sigma, while, as for today, CMS claims this range ruled out. It is possible that this is another glimpse for a Higgs multiplet as required by supersymmetry. I think that also this matter will be fixed soon next year.

The conference raised a lot of enthusiasm (see here) to some caution (see here) or skepticism (see here).

Fabiola Gianotti, Rolf Heuer and Guido Tonelli

What makes these hints striking is the fact that both experiments see the excess in the same region where the particle was expected and with the proper rates. It should also be said that, with these data and energy, people at CERN have done an excellent work with the analysis of them. But, of course, it is still possible that we are coping with a fluctuation and the particle is hiding elsewhere or is something else. For sure, next year the puzzle will be completed and also this part of the Standard Model will be part of our textbooks in the right way. What we have here is a completely new situation holding the premises for a clear understanding of one of the greatest question of mankind ever. So, when a child will ask to you: “Mom, what are we made of?” this question will have an answer, an answer arising from the work of a lot of smart people running one of the greatest technological achievement of our history: LHC.

## Today great news!

18/11/2011

A couple of fundamental great news, well one is just a rumor, is hitting scientific community today.

Higgs search

At Paris Conference, Gigi Rolandi addressed his talk on combination for LHC and Tevatron. This picture has been waited for a long time since the excellent work of Phil Gibbs at his blog (see here for an account of this). So far, this combination accounted just for a $2.3\ fb^{-1}$ luminosity and what is obtained is that no excess greater than $2\sigma$ is observed on all the range starting from 114 GeV to near 600 GeV. I give here, as done by other bloggers, the picture

Now, the most promising region seems to be at high mass but we are always around $2\sigma$. The great news here, but it is an uncontrolled rumor, is given at Jester’s blog: Also with $5\ fb^{-1}$ no excess greater than $2\sigma$ is seen in the low mass region! Standard model Higgs seems to be ruled out and the physics here is somewhat different. My view is that if it is proven true that such a scalar particle exists and has a high mass, something unacceptable so far for the standard model, also supersymmetry will be proven true (see here).

OPERA

OPERA Collaboration confirmed their measurements on the speed of neutrinos. This is a major breakthrough in physics and a new version of their preprint is appeared on arXiv today (see here).  This will soon be published on JHEP. So, no more discussions whatsoever but the last word is left to other independent measurements. This is really a breaking news for physics and my personal view is that this should represent a first example of a measurement that could have some impact in the area of quantum gravity. For a fine account, as usual, you can read here.

These are the promises for exciting time ahead. Stay tuned!

Update: Dennis Overbye commented on OPERA new results on New York Times (see here). A few comments from reputable scientists are worth reading.

Marco Frasca (2010). Mass generation and supersymmetry arXiv arXiv: 1007.5275v2

The OPERA Collaboraton: T. Adam, N. Agafonova, A. Aleksandrov, O. Altinok, P. Alvarez Sanchez, A. Anokhina, S. Aoki, A. Ariga, T. Ariga, D. Autiero, A. Badertscher, A. Ben Dhahbi, A. Bertolin, C. Bozza, T. Brugière, R. Brugnera, F. Brunet, G. Brunetti, S. Buontempo, B. Carlus, F. Cavanna, A. Cazes, L. Chaussard, M. Chernyavsky, V. Chiarella, A. Chukanov, G. Colosimo, M. Crespi, N. D’Ambrosio, G. De Lellis, M. De Serio, Y. Déclais, P. del Amo Sanchez, F. Di Capua, A. Di Crescenzo, D. Di Ferdinando, N. Di Marco, S. Dmitrievsky, M. Dracos, D. Duchesneau, S. Dusini, J. Ebert, I. Efthymiopoulos, O. Egorov, A. Ereditato, L. S. Esposito, J. Favier, T. Ferber, R. A. Fini, T. Fukuda, A. Garfagnini, G. Giacomelli, M. Giorgini, M. Giovannozzi, C. Girerd, J. Goldberg, C. Göllnitz, D. Golubkov, L. Goncharov, Y. Gornushkin, G. Grella, F. Grianti, E. Gschwendtner, C. Guerin, A. M. Guler, C. Gustavino, C. Hagner, K. Hamada, T. Hara, M. Hierholzer, A. Hollnagel, M. Ieva, H. Ishida, K. Ishiguro, K. Jakovcic, C. Jollet, M. Jones, F. Juget, M. Kamiscioglu, J. Kawada, S. H. Kim, M. Kimura, E. Kiritsis, N. Kitagawa, B. Klicek, J. Knuesel, K. Kodama, M. Komatsu, U. Kose, I. Kreslo, C. Lazzaro, J. Lenkeit, A. Ljubicic, A. Longhin, A. Malgin, G. Mandrioli, J. Marteau, T. Matsuo, N. Mauri, A. Mazzoni, E. Medinaceli, F. Meisel, A. Meregaglia, P. Migliozzi, S. Mikado, D. Missiaen, K. Morishima, U. Moser, M. T. Muciaccia, N. Naganawa, T. Naka, M. Nakamura, T. Nakano, Y. Nakatsuka, V. Nikitina, F. Nitti, S. Ogawa, N. Okateva, A. Olchevsky, O. Palamara, A. Paoloni, B. D. Park, I. G. Park, A. Pastore, L. Patrizii, E. Pennacchio, H. Pessard, C. Pistillo, N. Polukhina, M. Pozzato, K. Pretzl, F. Pupilli, R. Rescigno, F. Riguzzi, T. Roganova, H. Rokujo, G. Rosa, I. Rostovtseva, A. Rubbia, A. Russo, O. Sato, Y. Sato, J. Schuler, L. Scotto Lavina, J. Serrano, A. Sheshukov, H. Shibuya, G. Shoziyoev, S. Simone, M. Sioli, C. Sirignano, G. Sirri, J. S. Song, M. Spinetti, L. Stanco, N. Starkov, S. Stellacci, M. Stipcevic, T. Strauss, S. Takahashi, M. Tenti, F. Terranova, I. Tezuka, V. Tioukov, P. Tolun, N. T. Tran, S. Tufanli, P. Vilain, M. Vladimirov, L. Votano, J. -L. Vuilleumier, G. Wilquet, B. Wonsak, J. Wurtz, C. S. Yoon, J. Yoshida, Y. Zaitsev, S. Zemskova, & A. Zghiche (2011). Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam arXiv arXiv: 1109.4897v2

## News on the Higgs

11/11/2011

The end of this year is approaching, LHC gathered data at higher luminosity but it is since the end of August that no news is around about the status of the search of the Higgs particle. Of course, a frenzy of activity is going around at CERN and finally, something seems to move. On Monday a new conference will begin in Paris (see here). No relevant novelties are expected with respect to this talk but DG of CERN asked for updates in the mid of December (see here for other information). Besides, rumors are spreading around blogosphere that a group at CERN asked at the conference organizers a further slot to give an announcement. All this is giving the flavor that, for the end of this year, some relevant news about Higgs will come out. It could be possibly a matter of days.

I would like to resume here the situation. Latest measurements seem to exclude a standard model Higgs for almost all the range from the LEP limit of 114 GeV to near 600 GeV. At about 600 GeV ATLAS is seeing an excess. Similarly, it is possible that Higgs particle is hiding at around 140 GeV but all the excesses seen so far are no more high than $2\sigma$ so that, a no Higgs scenario is gaining support. Tevatron appears to confirm this situation. The excess at 600 GeV, if confirmed, will imply a relevant re-analysis of the standard model as, in this case, we will enter into the realm of a strongly coupled quantum field theory. I provided mathematics for this (see here and here) but it is not widely accepted by the scientific community and, in general, other methods to work with this case are not known and most of our understanding relies on lattice computations. A heavy Higgs has also been forecast by Paolo Cea and Leonardo Cosmai (see here and here) having approximately the mass near the ATLAS excess. This would make the situation quite dramatic but really exciting and will provide a strong evidence for the existence of supersymmetry. Besides, in this case, a whole spectrum of excited states of this heavy and strongly coupled Higgs will also be observed.

In view of this near approaching dates, we wish the best of luck to people at CERN and thank them for their excellent work.

Marco Frasca (2010). Mass generation and supersymmetry arXiv arXiv: 1007.5275v2

Marco Frasca (2010). Mapping theorem and Green functions in Yang-Mills theory PoS FacesQCD:039,2010 arXiv: 1011.3643v3

P. Cea, & L. Cosmai (2011). The trivial Higgs boson: first evidences from LHC arXiv arXiv: 1106.4178v1

P. Cea, & L. Cosmai (2011). The Trivial Higgs at LHC arXiv arXiv: 1109.5922v1