The great high-energy physics conference ICHEP 2018 is over and, as usual, I spend some words about it. The big collaborations of CERN presented their last results. I think the most relevant of this is about the evidence () that the Standard Model is at odds with the measurement of spin correlation between top-antitop pair of quarks. More is given in the ATLAS communicate. As expected, increasing precision proves to be rewarding.
About the Higgs particle, after the important announcement about the existence of the ttH process, both ATLAS and CMS are pursuing further their improvement of precision. About the signal strength they give the following results. For ATLAS (see here)
The news is that the error is diminished and both agrees. They show a small tension, 13% and 17% respectively, but the overall result is consistent with the Standard Model.
When the different contributions are unpacked in the respective contributions due to different processes, CMS claims some tensions in the WW decay that should be taken under scrutiny in the future (see here). They presented the results from data and so, there is no significant improvement, for the moment, with respect to Moriond conference this year. The situation is rather better for the ZZ decay where no tension appears and the agreement with the Standard Model is there in all its glory (see here). Things are quite different, but not too much, for ATLAS as in this case they observe some tensions but these are all below (see here). For the WW decay, ATLAS does not see anything above (see here).
So, although there is something to take under attention with the increase of data, that will reach this year, but the Standard Model is in good health with respect to the Higgs sector even if there is a lot to be answered yet and precision measurements are the main tool. The correlation in the tt pair is absolutely promising and we should hope this will be confirmed a discovery.
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“I think the most relevant of this is about the evidence (3\sigma) that the Standard Model is at odds with the measurement of spin correlation between top-antitop pair of quarks.”
Reading the paper, the most striking point, which undermines its significance, is that they didn’t take into account correlations between the different sources of error despite strong evidence some of the errors are strongly correlated. This should make the result far less significant once this is considered.
Also, if it is real, why isn’t CMS seeing the same thing.
Indeed, this is the view of some physicists at CMS that I caught on the net. Even if they are not able to measure this quantity directly, they do not see the effect.I am afraid that we have to wait some years yet to hope to see something really evading the Standard Model.
The Gauge Connection 
“I think the most relevant of this is about the evidence (3\sigma) that the Standard Model is at odds with the measurement of spin correlation between top-antitop pair of quarks.”
Reading the paper, the most striking point, which undermines its significance, is that they didn’t take into account correlations between the different sources of error despite strong evidence some of the errors are strongly correlated. This should make the result far less significant once this is considered.
Also, if it is real, why isn’t CMS seeing the same thing.
Indeed, this is the view of some physicists at CMS that I caught on the net. Even if they are not able to measure this quantity directly, they do not see the effect.I am afraid that we have to wait some years yet to hope to see something really evading the Standard Model.
It was a pleasure, as always, to see you latest preprint today.
Thank you.