Physics Colloquium - Is it the Higgs Boson?
Jim Olsen
On July 4 the CMS and ATLAS experiments operating at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, announced the discovery of a new particle with a mass of 125 GeV. From its observed decay to two photons, we know this particle has intrinsic spin equal to 0 or 2, and must therefore be a boson. There is also strong evidence that it decays to the massive vector gauge bosons, the W and Z particles. The only remaining undiscovered fundamental particle in the standard model, the Higgs boson, shares all of these properties, but initial evidence is insufficient to rule out other possibilities. In this colloquium I will trace the saga of the Higgs boson from invention to possible discovery, and outline the additional measurements that are necessary to determine if the new particle observed at the LHC is indeed that proposed by Peter Higgs et al. in 1964.
Location: McDonnell A02
Date/Time: 09/20/12 at 4:30 pm - 09/20/12 at 5:30 pm
Category: Physics Colloquium
Department: Physics