Is the Higgs boson already discovered?

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the current status of Higgs boson research, particularly referencing Alberto Palma's paper (Arxiv:1202.0217), which indicates that the ATLAS collaboration found no evidence of the Higgs boson in their data sample at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. They established upper limits on the Higgs production cross section, suggesting a mass range of 110 to 130 GeV. While there are hints of a Higgs boson mass around 126 GeV, the statistical significance remains insufficient for a definitive discovery, as particle physicists require a 5 sigma confidence level for confirmation.

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  • #31
Vanadium 50 said:
Exactly. They will decide based on the evidence whether or not they are confident that they have something.
So what. Would you say that OPERA has found superluminal neutrinos, because they claimed that (in the past)? Did CDF "find" this strange new particle, which was (probably) just a bad Monte Carlo description?
If the collaborations present some 5sigma-result, I'll be highly confident that they saw the Higgs. But it is not a binary decision - the confidence will just be higher than now.


Note that the collaborations also have additional evidence that is not public - every discovery (or decision that it's not a discovery) I have been involved with was informed by additional information that was not public at the time. For example, the outcome of a parallel analysis.
A lot of cross-checks and other stuff, but usually nothing which boosts the significance in a significant way.
 
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  • #32
The collaborations' confidence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for discovery.
 

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