The two CERN collaborations, ATLAS and CMS, are trying to independently find the Higgs and confirm each other’s results. Each excludes a standard-model Higgs above 135GeV at above 95% confidence (to about 450 GeV if I recall) and ATLAS finds an excess around 126 GeV consistent with a Higgs at this mass. CMS finds a very slight excess, slightly displaced from (around 124 GeV) though roughly consistent with the ATLAS result. It’s not a detection yet (ATLAS would need more statistical significance on their excess), but it’s tantalizing. They’ll continue running and analyzing data next year, and hopefully we’ll know for sure!
Here are some tweets/retweets from the live cast in chronological order:
happy #higgsmas everyone!—
(@pixieza) December 13, 2011
Higgs livecast gathering at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, UZH twitpic.com/7sqqb8—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
so far congratulating the team, summary of difficulty of making measurements #higgsupdate #higgsmass #higgsliveblog—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
just went over what's excluded at above 95% by atlas cms and fermilab what's left is 114.4-141GeV #higgsmass #higgsliveblog #higgsupdate—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
@blancpain no.. Though it's not sooo complicated happy to answer questions—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
going over observations channel by channel, nothing too interesting yet. #Higgs #higgsliveblog #higgsupdate—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
finally something exciting 'slight excess around 126 GeV' #Higgs #higgsupdate #higgsliveblog—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
2.8sigma in this channel interesting but not what I'd call a detection yet twitpic.com/7sr2mw—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
I think I see @pixieza #Higgs #higgsupdate #higgsliveblog—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
going over individual events in the 'golden channel'—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
now excluded above 135 GeV, what's left? 115-135 #higgsliveblog #higgsupdate #HIGGS—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
better exclusion (1st plot), there's an excess at 126 GeV(2nd) 2.3 sigma, in nonexcluded region twitpic.com/7sr82i twitpic.com/7sr81v—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
"I think it would be extremely kind for the Higgs boson to be here[126 GeV]" "but it is too early to tell" #higgs twitpic.com/7sr9jb—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
@pixieza could use some more sigmas but they are purty—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
we care about each production channel as each brings new constraints, consistency checks and results #higgsupdate #higgsliveblog—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
A channel~Higgs can decay in different ways, we observe what it decays to. Depending on what, this is easier or harder. Each manner=channel.—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Each channel has different background of events coming from things that aren't Higgs. Need to understand background very well, to Higgspot—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
You can already see some nice event displays from #cmsexperiment at cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1406073
And animations will be coming soon! #CERN #Higgs—
CMS Experiment CERN (@CMSexperiment) December 13, 2011
Now CMS gets their turn. With 5.2 inverse fb they expect 2-3 sigma signals. #Higgs, ^DF—
Perimeter Institute (@pioutreach) December 13, 2011
@blancpain the graphic design of the slides is horrifying—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Oh damn. No definitive conclusion for #Higgs mass after all. I have endured the blinding Comic Sans for nothing. #CERN #LHC #CMS #ATLAS—
Işıl Demir (@ladyisilien) December 13, 2011
@blancpain check out my two tweets on what a channel is.—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
2 photons good, 4 photons — also good! MT @CERN Tonelli #CMS: not all channels equal: #Higgs to 2 photons or 4 leptons have best resolution—
FQXi Physics (@FQXi) December 13, 2011
@blancpain experimentalist jargon-but this is why there are a zillion slides and plots, they're going over background@signal in each channel—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
"some hint, no more than that" "there's not a particular region in which you see a bump, more of a blanket" in this particular channel—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Stoppard play once where he said physics not presented like mystery–answer in beginning of presentation. Not true for Higgs search.—
Lisa Randall (@lirarandall) December 13, 2011
@lirarandall I know! CMS needs to get to the bump already—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
CMS excess is much weaker than Atlas, as presented so far, but consistent—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Finally getting to lower mass channels #CMS #Higgs #higgsupdate—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Oh CMS, you love drawing this out…—
S.C. Kavassalis (@sc_k) December 13, 2011
An animated event display of a beautiful candidate SM #Higgs decaying to 4 muons at cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1406329 #HiggsUpdate #cmsexperiment #CERN—
CMS Experiment CERN (@CMSexperiment) December 13, 2011
Higgs announcement liveblog! quantumdiaries.org/2011/12/13/hig…—
Aaron Swartz (@aaronsw) December 13, 2011
"can't exclude SM Higgs below 127 GeV"' due to slight excess. Has a "modest statistical significance" "could be background". #Higgs—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
A great Higgs search analogy (Battleships) from @astronomyblog
bit.ly/vhwiKS #higgsupdate—
Chris North (@chrisenorth) December 13, 2011
Q&A makes more sense when you know 2 collaborations have tried to do their analyses separately so that they can verify without groupthink—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Q&A makes more sense when you know 2 collaborations have tried to do their analyses separately so that they can verify without groupthink—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Q&A also makes more sense when you know that us theorists are often more clueless about experiments #Higgs #higgsmass—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Entering final remarks. #atlas got many more Qs as they had more tantalizing result.—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
"please be prudent, we have not found it yet, we have not excluded it yet. Stay tuned for next year. #higgsmass #atlas #Higgs #higgsupdate—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
OK signing off #livehiggsblog for the day! happy #higgshunting next year @pixieza et. al. and congratulations!—
Christine Corbett (@corbett_inc) December 13, 2011
Posted on 12/13/2011
0