## Where we are now?

13/08/2019

Summer conferences passed by, we have more precise data on the Higgs particle and some new results were announced. So far, this particle appears more and more in agreement with the Standard Model expectations without no surprise in view. Several measurements were performed with the full dataset at 140 ${\rm fb}^{-1}$. Most commentators avoid to tell about this because it does not warrant click-bait anymore. At EPS-HEP 2019 in Ghent (Belgium), the following slide was presented by Hulin Wang on behalf of the ATLAS Collaboration

There appears to be an excess at 250 GeV and another at 700 GeV but we are talking of about 2 sigma, nothing relevant. Besides, ATLAS keeps on seeing an excess in the vector boson fusion for ZZ decay, again about 2 sigma, but CMS sees nothing, rather they are somewhat on the missing side!

No evidence of supersymmetry whatsoever, neither the multiplet of Higgs nor charged Higgs are seen that could hint to supersymmetry. I would like to remember that some researchers were able to obtain the minimal supersymmetric standard model from string theory and so, this is a diriment aspect of the experimental search. Is the Higgs particle just the first one of an extended sector of electroweak (soft) supersymmetry breaking?

So, why could the slide I just posted be so important? The interesting fact is the factor 2 between the mass of this presumed new resonance and that of the Higgs particle. The Higgs sector of the Standard Model can be removed from it and treated independently. Then, one can solve it exactly and the spectrum is given by an integer multiple of the mass of the Higgs particle. This is exactly the spectrum of a Kaluza-Klein particle and it would represents an indirect proof of the existence of another dimension in space. So, if confirmed, we would move from a desolating scenario with no new (beyond standard model) physics in view to a completely overturned situation! We could send all the critics back to sleep wishing them a better luck for the next tentative.

Back to reality, the slide yields the result for the dataset of 36.1 ${\rm fb}^{-1}$ and no confirmation from CMS has ever arrived. We can just hope that the dreaming scenario takes life.

## ICHEP 2018

08/07/2018

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 ($3\sigma$) 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)

$\mu=1.13\pm 0.05({\rm stat.})\pm 0.05({\rm exp.})^{+0.05}_{-0.04}({\rm sig. th.})\pm 0.03({\rm bkg. th})$

and CMS (see here)

$\mu=1.17\pm 0.06({\rm stat.})^{+0.06}_{-0.05}({\rm sig. th.})\pm 0.06({\rm other syst.}).$

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 $35.9{\rm fb}^{-1}$ 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 $2\sigma$ (see here). For the WW decay, ATLAS does not see anything above $1\sigma$ (see here).

So, although there is something to take under attention with the increase of data, that will reach $100 {\rm fb}^{-1}$ 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.

## Good news from Moriond

20/03/2018

Some days ago, Rencontres of Moriond 2018 ended with the CERN presenting a wealth of results also about the Higgs particle. The direction that the two great experiments, ATLAS and CMS, took is that of improving the measurements on the Standard Model as no evidence has been seen so far of possible new particles. Also, the studies of the properties of the Higgs particle have been refined as promised and the news are really striking.

In a communicate to the public (see here), CERN finally acknowledge, for the first time, a significant discrepancy between data from CMS and Standard Model for the signal strengths in the Higgs decay channels. They claim a 17% difference. This is what I advocated for some years and I have published in reputable journals. I will discuss this below. I would like only to show you the CMS results in the figure below.

ATLAS, by its side, is seeing significant discrepancy in the ZZ channel ($2\sigma$) and a $1\sigma$ compatibility for the WW channel. Here are their results.

On the left the WW channel is shown and on the right there are the combined $\gamma\gamma$ and ZZ channels.

The reason of the discrepancy is due, as I have shown in some papers (see here, here and here), to the improper use of perturbation theory to evaluate the Higgs sector. The true propagator of the theory is a sum of Yukawa-like propagators with a harmonic oscillator spectrum. I solved exactly this sector of the Standard Model. So, when the full propagator is taken into account, the discrepancy is toward an increase of the signal strength. Is it worth a try?

This means that this is not physics beyond the Standard Model but, rather, the Standard Model in its full glory that is teaching something new to us about quantum field theory. Now, we are eager to see the improvements in the data to come with the new run of LHC starting now. In the summer conferences we will have reasons to be excited.

## In the aftermath of ICHEP 2016

06/08/2016

ATLAS and CMS nuked our illusions on that bump. More than 500 papers were written on it and some of them went through Physical Review Letters. Now, we are contemplating the ruins of that house of cards. This says a lot about the situation in hep in these days. It should be emphasized that people at CERN warned that that data were not enough to draw a conclusion and if they fix the threshold at $5\sigma$ a reason must exist. But carelessness acts are common today if you are a theorist and no input from experiment is coming for long.

It should be said that the fact that LHC could confirm the Standard Model and nothing else is one of the possibilities. We should hope that a larger accelerator could be built, after LHC decommissioning, as there is a long way to the Planck energy that we do not know how to probe yet.

What does it remain? I think there is a lot yet. My analysis of the Higgs sector is still there to be checked as I will explain in a moment but this is just another way to treat the equations of the Standard Model, not beyond it. Besides, for the end of the year they will reach $30\ fb^{-1}$, almost triplicating the actual integrated luminosity and something interesting could ever pop out. There are a lot of years of results ahead and there is no need to despair. Just to wait. This is one of the most important activities of a theorist. Impatience does not work in physics and mostly for hep.

About the signal strength, things seem yet too far to be settled. I hope to see better figures for the end of the year. ATLAS is off the mark, going well beyond unity for WW, as happened before. CMS claimed $0.3\pm 0.5$ for WW decay, worsening their excellent measurement of $0.72^{+0.20}_{-0.18}$ reached in Run I. CMS agrees fairly well with my computations but I should warn that the error bar is yet too large and now is even worse. I remember that the signal strength is obtained by the ratio of the measured cross section to the one obtained from the Standard Model. The fact that is smaller does not necessarily mean that we are beyond the Standard Model but that we are just solving the Higgs sector in a different way than standard perturbation theory. This solution entails higher excitations of the Higgs field but they are strongly depressed and very difficult to observe now. The only mark could be the signal strength for the observed Higgs particle. Finally, the ZZ channel is significantly less sensible and error bars are so large that one can accommodate whatever she likes yet. Overproduction seen by ATLAS is just a fluctuation that will go away in the future.

The final sentence to this post is what we have largely heard in these days: Standard Model rules.

## Higgs or not Higgs, that is the question

16/06/2016

LHCP2016 is running yet with further analysis on 2015 data by people at CERN. We all have seen the history unfolding since the epochal event on 4 July 2012 where the announcement of the great discovery happened. Since then, also Kibble passed away. What is still there is our need of a deep understanding of the Higgs sector of the Standard Model. Quite recently, LHC restarted operations at the top achievable and data are gathered and analysed in view of the summer conferences.

The scalar particle observed at CERN has a mass of about 125 GeV. Data gathered on 2015 seem to indicate a further state at 750 GeV but this is yet to be confirmed. Anyway, both ATLAS and CMS see this bump in the $\gamma\gamma$ data and this seems to follow the story of the discovery of the Higgs particle. But we have not a fully understanding of the Higgs sector  yet. The reason is that, in run I, gathered data were not enough to reduce the error bars to such small values to decide if Standard Model wins or not. Besides, as shown by run II, further excitations seem to pop up. So, several theoretical proposals for the Higgs sector still stand up and could be also confirmed already in August this year.

Indeed, there are great news already in the data presented at LHCP2016. As I pointed out here, there is a curious behavior of the strengths of the signals of Higgs decay in $WW,\ ZZ$ and some tension, even if small, appeared between ATLAS and CMS results. Indeed, ATLAS seemed to have seen more events than CMS moving these contributions well beyond the unit value but, as CMS had them somewhat below, the average was the expected unity agreeing with expectations from the Standard Model. The strength of the signals is essential to understand if the propagator of the Higgs field is the usual free particle one or has some factor reducing it significantly with contributions from higher states summing up to unity. In this case, the observed state at 125 GeV would be just the ground state of a tower of particles being its excited states. As I showed recently, this is not physics beyond the Standard Model, rather is obtained by solving exactly the quantum equations of motion of the Higgs sector (see here). This is done considering the other fields interacting with the Higgs field just a perturbation.

So, let us do a recap of what was the situation for the strength of the signals for the $WW\, ZZ$ decays of the Higgs particle. At LHCP2015 the data were given in the following slide

From the table one can see that the signal strengths for $WW,\ ZZ$ decays in ATLAS are somewhat beyond unity while in CMS these are practically unity for $ZZ$ but, more interestingly, 0.85 for $WW$. But we know that data gathered for $WW$ decay are largely more than for $ZZ$ decay. The error bars are large enough to be not a concern here. The value 0.85 is really in agreement with the already cited exact computations from the Higgs sector but, within the error, in overall agreement with the Standard Model. This seems to point toward on overestimated number of events in ATLAS but a somewhat reduced number of events in CMS, at least for $WW$ decay.

At LHCP2016 new data have been presented from the two collaborations, at least for the $ZZ$ decay. The results are striking. In order to see if the scenario provided from the exact solution of the Higgs sector is in agreement with data, these should be confirmed from run II and those from ATLAS should go down significantly. This is indeed what is going on! This is the corresponding slide

This result is striking per se as shows a tendency toward a decreasing value when, in precedence, it was around unity. Now it is aligned with the value seen at CMS for the $WW$ decay! The value seen is again in agreement with that given in the exact solution of the Higgs sector. And ATLAS? This is the most shocking result: They see a significant reduced set of events and the signal strength they obtain is now aligned to the one of CMS (see Strandberg’s talk at page 11).

What should one conclude from this? If the state at 750 GeV should be confirmed, as the spectrum given by the exact solution of the Higgs sector is given by an integer multiplied by a mass, this would be at $n=6$. Together with the production strengths, if further data will confirm them, the proper scenario for the breaking of electroweak symmetry is exactly the one described by the exact solution. Of course, this should be obviously true but an experimental confirmation is essential for a lot of reasons, last but not least the form of the Higgs potential that, if the numbers are these, the one postulated in the sixties would be the correct one. An other important reason is that coupling with other matter does not change the spectrum of the theory in a significant way.

So, to answer to the question of the title remains to wait a few weeks. Then, summer conferences will start and, paraphrasing Coleman: God knows, I know and by the end of the summer we all know.

Marco Frasca (2015). A theorem on the Higgs sector of the Standard Model Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2016) 131: 199 arXiv: 1504.02299v3

## News from CERN

17/12/2015

Two days ago, CERN presented their new results at 13 TeV to the World. Of course, collected data so far are not enough for conclusive results but the these are exciting anyway. The reason is that both the collaborations, CMS and ATLAS, see a bump at around 750 GeV in the $\gamma\gamma$ decay. Summing up the results of the two collaborations, they are around $4\sigma$ without look elsewhere effect, not yet a discovery but, probably, at the summer conferences they will have something more conclusive to say. This could be an unlucky fluctuation but this situation remember us the story of the discovery of the Higgs boson more than three years ago. The question if this is beyond Standard Model physics is what I will try to answer in these few lines.

Firstly, if this particle is real, it decays with two photons exactly as the Higgs boson. Secondly, with a final state like this it can have only spin 0 or 2. We will be conservative and assume that this is not a graviton. Rather, it is a sibling of the Higgs particle. Besides, it was not observed in run I but is not inconsistent with data from there. It appears like the increased luminosity favored its appearance. We want to be more conservative and we take for granted just the Lagrangian of the Standard Model. So, what is this beast?

My answer is that this could be an excited state of the Higgs boson that, having a production rate lower than its ground state seen at run I, needed more luminosity to be observed. You do not need to change the Lagrangian of the Standard Model for this and it is not BSM physics yet. You do not even need a technicolor theory to describe it. The reason is that the Higgs part of the Standard Model can be treated mathematically yielding exact solutions. The quantum field theory can be exactly solved and the spectrum of the theory says exactly what I stated above (see here, and here). The Higgs model per se is exactly solvable. So, Jester’s idea to add another scalar field to the Lagrangian model is useless, it is all just inside and you will get a two photon final state as well.

Of course, it is too early to draw a final conclusion and a wealth of papers with a prompt explanation flooded arxiv in these two days. With the restart of LHC on spring and the collecting of more data, things will be clearer than now. For the moment, this hint is enough to keep us excited for the next few months.

Marco Frasca (2015). A theorem on the Higgs sector of the Standard Model arxiv arXiv: 1504.02299v2

Marco Frasca (2015). Quantum Yang-Mills field theory arxiv arXiv: 1509.05292v1

## Higgs even more standard

02/09/2015

LHCP 2015 is going on at St. Peterburg and new results were presented by the two main collaborations at CERN. CMS and ATLAS combined the results from run 1 and improved the quality of the measured data of the Higgs particle discovered on 2012. CERN press release is here. I show you the main picture about the couplings between the Higgs field and the other particles in the Standard Model widely exposed in all the social networks

What makes this plot so striking is the very precise agreement with the Standard Model. Anyhow, the ellipses are somewhat large yet to grant new physics creeping in at run 2. My view is that the couplings, determining the masses of the particles in the Standard Model, are less sensible to new physics than the strength of the signal at various decays. Also this plot is available (hat tip to Adam Falkowski)

In this plot you can see that the Standard Model, represented by a star, is somewhat at the border of the areas of the ZZ and WW decays and that of the WW decay is making smaller. This does not imply that in the future deviations from the Standard Model will be seen here but leave the impression that this could happen in run 2 with the increasing precision expected for these measurements.

The strengths are so interesting because the Higgs sector of the Standard Model can be solved exactly with the propagator providing the values of them (see here). These generally disagree from those obtained by standard perturbation theory even if by a small extent. Besides, Higgs particle should have internal degrees of freedom living also in higher excited states. All of this to be seen at run 2 as the production rate of these states appears to be smaller as higher is their mass.

Run 2 is currently ongoing even if the expected luminosity will not be reached for this year. For sure, the next year summer conferences could provide a wealth of shocking new results. Hints are already seen by both the main collaborations and LHCb. Something new is just behind the corner.

Marco Frasca (2015). A theorem on the Higgs sector of the Standard Model arxiv arXiv: 1504.02299v1