Higgs boson behaves just as expected, ‘comprehensive studies’ confirm
“Sketching such a portrait this early on was unthinkable before the LHC operated”
Luca Malgeri
The “most comprehensive studies” of the Higgs boson conducted to date reveal that the particle behaves just as expected and could help unlock some of the greatest mysteries of physics, including the nature of dark matter, scientists say. Two new studies, based on 10,000 trillion proton-on-proton collisions conducted inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during its second run, which ended in 2018, analysed 8 million Higgs boson particles detected by the LHC’s ATLAS and CMS detectors. The studies were published on 4 July, the 10th anniversary of the Higgs boson discovery by the LHC, the world’s largest particle smasher. They show that the particle behaves just as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, the all-encompassing theory describing how the basic building blocks of the universe hold together.
The Higgs boson plays a prominent role in the Standard Model. The particle is a carrier of an all-pervading quantum field, known as the Higgs field, which gives other elementary particles their mass. During the experiments, physicists studied how Higgs bosons interact with each other and also with other particles. Such interactions frequently lead to Higgs bosons decaying into other particles, and scientists believe that, somewhere in this chain reaction, they could produce dark matter, the elusive substance that no one has ever seen directly but which is believed to make up about 80 per cent of all matter in the universe. “Sketching such a portrait of the Higgs boson this early on was unthinkable before the LHC started operating,” CMS spokesperson Luca Malgeri said. “The reasons for this achievement are manifold and include the exceptional performances of the LHC and of the ATLAS and CMS detectors, and the ingenious data analysis techniques employed.”