Higgs Boson Given Less Space To Hide
Analyzing several years' worth of results from Fermilab's
Tevatron collider, physicists come up with the most accurate
measurement to date of the mass of the W boson, and narrow down
the possible mass of the still undiscovered Higgs boson
Over the past three decades or more, physicists have developed
their experimental and theoretical understanding of the world of
subatomic particles into a comprehensive theory known as the
standard model. Much of the standard model has been verified and
tested, but one particle--the Higgs boson--has so far escaped
detection.
The Higgs boson is a crucial element in the electroweak part of
the standard model, which provides a unified theoretical account
of the electromagnetic interaction and the weak nuclear
interaction (involved in radioactive beta decay, among other
things). The W and Z bosons, also predicted by electroweak
unification, were found more than 25 years ago, but final
confirmation of this part of the standard model must wait for
conclusive detection of the Higgs boson.
That goal has come a little nearer with two recent
announcements, both the result of years of data collection and
analysis, from experimental teams at the Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. One achievement is
the most precise measurement yet of the W boson's mass. The
other shrinks the mass range where the Higgs boson--if indeed it
exists--must be hiding. The teams released their news at the
Rencontres de Moriond, an annual particle physics meeting that
ran from March 7-14, 2009, in the Italian Alps.
At Fermilab's Tevatron, protons and antiprotons speed around a
circular track two kilometers in diameter, accelerated to
energies close to 1 Teraelectronvolt (TeV). The beams are
steered so that they cross at two places in the Tevatron ring,
where vast and complex detection systems stand ready to capture
and analyze the showers of fast-moving particles that erupt from
proton-antiproton collisions. Physicists cannot detect the W or
the Higgs boson directly. When created in a collision, each
particle lives only a tiny fraction of second before decaying
into other particles--and it's certain telltale combinations of
those secondary particles that scientists look for.
In experiments at DZero, one of the Tevatron's two detector
stations, physicists compiled a total of 499,830 collision
events, collected from 2002 to 2006, in which a W briefly
appeared before decaying into an electron and an electron
neutrino. Because the weakly interacting neutrino escapes
unscathed from the detector, the total momentum of the detected
collision debris will show an imbalance. In this case, the
signature that the DZero physicists looked for is a fast-moving
electron coupled with missing momentum.
To estimate the W's mass, the scientists carried out randomized
computer simulations of collisions, for different hypothetical
values of the W mass, to see what value gave the best fit to the
electron energies and trajectories in the nearly half million
recorded events. They conclude that the W mass is 80.401
Gigaelectronvolts (GeV), with an uncertainty of 0.044 GeV--the
most accurate measurement to date. (Using Einstein's rule that E
= mc2, physicists routinely measure particle masses in energy
units. On this scale the proton's mass is 0.938 GeV). Adding the
new result to the existing set of W mass measurements will lead
to a small upward revision of the previous "world average" mass
estimate, which stood at 80.399 GeV, and more significantly will
reduce the overall uncertainty in that value.
Searching for the Higgs boson is a more demanding task yet.
Collisions can produce Higgs bosons in a variety of ways, and
several distinct decay modes lead to a variety of experimental
signature that physicists must look for. To tackle this complex
task, teams from DZero and from the Collider Detector at
Fermilab (CDF), the Tevatron's other detection system, pooled
data collected over many years. Computer simulations to compare
the data with projected results for a given Higgs mass are also
more complicated, since they have to juggle several different
Higgs production and decay possibilities to settle on a "best
fit" to all the experimental results.
The Fermilab experiments have not yet found a Higgs boson, but
that negative result limits the mass it might have. Scientists
already knew that the Higgs mass must be greater than 114 GeV,
or it would have been found already. And a combination of other
experimental evidence and theoretical arguments mean that the
mass cannot be more 185 GeV. The DZero and CDF teams now add a
further restriction, concluding that there's less than one
chance in 20 that the Higgs could have a mass between 160 and
170 GeV. The Fermilab experiments were particularly sensitive in
that range because a Higgs with that mass would create an
experimental signature that's easier to detect.
Both teams continue to run experiments, and by the end of 2010
they should have more than doubled the number of events they
have collected and analyzed so far. That amount of data should
allow the scientists to extend the sensitivity of their search
to the full mass range and to get close to either finding the
Higgs boson or beginning to suspect that it may not exist.
Either conclusion would be momentous.
David Lindley, National Science Foundation
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