LHC Press release

[Kalvaer]

CERN to give update on Higgs search as curtain raiser to ICHEP conference

Geneva, 22 June 2012. CERN1 will hold a scientific seminar at 9:00CEST on 4 July to deliver the latest update in the search for the Higgs boson. At this seminar, coming on the eve of this year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP, in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments will deliver the preliminary results of their 2012 data analysis.

“Data taking for ICHEP concluded on Monday 18 June after a very successful first period of LHC running in 2012,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. “I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the data reveals.”

The 2012 LHC run schedule was designed to deliver the maximum possible quantity of data to the experiments before the ICHEP conference, and with more data delivered between April and June 2012 than in the whole 2011 run, the strategy has been a success. Furthermore, the experiments have been refining their analysis techniques to improve their efficiency in picking out Higgs-like events from the millions of collisions occurring every second. This means that their sensitivity to new phenomena has significantly increased for both years’ data sets.* The crunching of all this data has been done by the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, which has exceeded its design specifications to handle the unprecedented volume of data and computing.**

“We now have more than double the data we had last year,” said CERN Director for Research and Computing, Sergio Bertolucci, “that should be enough to see whether the trends we were seeing in the 2011 data are still there, or whether they’ve gone away. It’s a very exciting time.”

If and when a new particle is discovered, ATLAS and CMS will need time to ascertain whether it is the long sought Higgs boson, the last missing ingredient of the Standard Model of particle physics, or whether it is a more exotic form of the boson that could open the door to new physics.

“It’s a bit like spotting a familiar face from afar,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer, “sometimes you need closer inspection to find out whether it’s really your best friend, or actually your best friend’s twin.”

The Standard Model gives an extraordinarily precise picture of the matter that makes up all the visible universe, and the forces that govern its behaviour, but there are good reasons to believe that this is not the end of the story. For example, we know from observation that the visible universe is just 4% of what seems to be out there.

Physicists from around the world gathering in Melbourne for the ICHEP conference will be able to join the seminar via a live two-way link. The seminar will be followed by a press conference at CERN. It will be available via webcast at http://webcast.cern.ch/, accompanied by plain language interpretations from physicists accessible in blogs and chats from the webcast site.

Press who wishes to attend the press conference at CERN should register here: http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?ovw=True&confId=196564

Contact:

CERN press office, [email protected]
+41 22 767 34 32
+41 22 767 21 41

 

[Kalvaer]

Dont know if anyone logged into to watch this earlier this afternoon, but here is the official release from Tevatron's press room

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/2012/Higgs-Tevatron-20120702.html

Tevatron scientists announce their final results on the Higgs particle
After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. Squeezing the last bit of information out of 500 trillion collisions produced by the Tevatron for each experiment since March 2001, the final analysis of the data does not settle the question of whether the Higgs particle exists, but gets closer to an answer. The Tevatron scientists unveiled their latest results on July 2, two days before the highly anticipated announcement of the latest Higgs-search results from the Large Hadron Collider in Europe.

“The Tevatron experiments accomplished the goals that we had set with this data sample,” said Fermilab’s Rob Roser, cospokesperson for the CDF experiment at DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. “Our data strongly point toward the existence of the Higgs boson, but it will take results from the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to establish a discovery.”

Scientists of the CDF and DZero collider experiments at the Tevatron received a round of rousing applause from hundreds of colleagues when they presented their results at a scientific seminar at Fermilab. The Large Hadron Collider results will be announced at a scientific seminar at 2 a.m. CDT on July 4 at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

“It is a real cliffhanger,” said DZero co-spokesperson Gregorio Bernardi, physicist at the Laboratory of Nuclear and High Energy Physics, or LPNHE, at the University of Paris VI & VII. “We know exactly what signal we are looking for in our data, and we see strong indications of the production and decay of Higgs bosons in a crucial decay mode with a pair of bottom quarks, which is difficult to observe at the LHC. We are very excited about it.”

The Higgs particle is named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, who among other physicists in the 1960s helped develop the theoretical model that explains why some particles have mass and others don’t, a major step toward understanding the origin of mass. The model predicts the existence of a new particle, which has eluded experimental detection ever since. Only high-energy particle colliders such as the Tevatron, which was shut down in September 2011, and the Large Hadron Collider, which produced its first collisions in November 2009, have the chance to produce the Higgs particle. About 1,700 scientists from U.S. institutions, including Fermilab, are working on the LHC experiments.

The Tevatron results indicate that the Higgs particle, if it exists, has a mass between 115 and 135 GeV/c2, or about 130 times the mass of the proton.

"During its life, the Tevatron must have produced thousands of Higgs particles, if they actually exist,*and it's up to us to try to find them in the data we have collected,”*said*Luciano Ristori, co-spokesperson of the CDF experiment and physicist at Fermilab and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) . “We have developed sophisticated simulation and analysis*programs to identify Higgs-like patterns. Still, it is easier to look for a friend’s face in a sports stadium filled with 100,000*people than to search for a Higgs-like event among trillions of collisions.”

The final Tevatron results corroborate the Higgs search results that scientists from the Tevatron and the LHC presented at physics conferences in March 2012.

The search for the Higgs particle at the Tevatron focuses on a different decay mode than the search at the LHC. According to the theoretical framework known as the Standard Model of Particles, Higgs bosons can decay in many different ways. Just as a vending machine might return the same amount of change using different combinations of coins, the Higgs can decay into different combinations of particles. At the LHC, the experiments can most easily observe the existence of a Higgs particle by searching for its decay into two energetic photons. At the Tevatron, experiments most easily see the decay of a Higgs particle into a pair of bottom quarks.

Tevatron scientists found that the observed Higgs signal in the combined CDF and DZero data in the bottom-quark decay mode has a statistical significance of 2.9 sigma. This means there is only a 1-in-550 chance that the signal is due to a statistical fluctuation.

“We achieved a critical step in the search for the Higgs boson,” said Dmitri Denisov, DZero cospokesperson and physicist at Fermilab. “While 5-sigma significance is required for a discovery, it seems unlikely that the Tevatron collisions mimicked a Higgs signal. Nobody expected the Tevatron to get this far when it was built in the 1980s.”

The Tevatron is one of eight particle accelerators and storage rings on the Fermilab site. The largest, operational accelerator at Fermilab now is the 2-mile-circumference Main Injector, which provides particles for the laboratory’s neutrino and muon research programs.

The CDF and DZero collaborations submitted their joint Higgs search results to the electronic preprint archive arXiv.org. The paper also is available at:
http://tevnphwg.fnal.gov/results/SM_Higgs_Summer_12/

 

[Techne]

Fascinating! Are the Tevatron guys trying to take some of the limelight away form the LHC guys ?

Do you perhaps work with this guy:
A 2.5 Sigma Higgs Signal From The Tevatron !

Some of his articles are quite interesting (well the bits I get are interesting anyway ).

A bit off-topic, but it's something that has intrigued me somewhat and I am hoping you may help.

Beta-decay, whereby neutrons decay into protons, happens all the time. But we haven't observed any kind of proton decay. So I was just wondering how long it will take before everything turns into protons .

 

[Kalvaer]

The Tevatron does deserve some credit, they have just been so over shadowed by the LHC, but the timing does suggest a final grab at fame.

With regards to Tommaso, he is on CMS while I am on ATLAS, but Claire was one of the quantum dairies bloggers with him and while I haven't met him personally, one of our friends, Gordan ( http://gordonwatts.wordpress.com/ ), has quite interesting "discussions" on facebook with him at times

As to the proton decay.. I'll have to check with Claire.. I just make sure the server farm works so that they can do the physics

 

[Techne]

The Tevatron does deserve some credit, they have just been so over shadowed by the LHC, but the timing does suggest a final grab at fame.

With regards to Tommaso, he is on CMS while I am on ATLAS, but Claire was one of the quantum dairies bloggers with him and while I haven't met him personally, one of our friends, Gordan ( http://gordonwatts.wordpress.com/ ), has quite interesting "discussions" on facebook with him at times

As to the proton decay.. I'll have to check with Claire.. I just make sure the server farm works so that they can do the physics

Cool thanks. Must be an awesome job to have. http://www.quantumdiaries.org/ looks great too.

 

[Unhappy1]

The Tevatron does deserve some credit, they have just been so over shadowed by the LHC, but the timing does suggest a final grab at fame.

With the potential to generate x7 the power so it should

 

[Geriatrix]

So they found-maybe the Higgs! Whoo Hoo-perhaps!

 

[Kalvaer]

So they found-maybe the Higgs! Whoo Hoo-perhaps!

The rumurs flying around CERN right now are incredible, and its hard to know what to believe. We did all get an email for the DG though saying that the doors would be locked until 7:30 on wed to the auditorium, so people who wanted to sleep inside to get a seat have to make other plans :d

 

[ponder]

Any updates Kalvaer?

 

[Kalvaer]

CMS 4.9 sigma.. Atlas about to announce.. nobody at CERN is working.. its all quiet

 

[Kalvaer]

ATLAS announced a 5.0 Sigma

 

[poffle]

If this is 100% the "God Particle".. kal, can you give an estimate on how long it will take to be able to "use" this particle in experiments? Sorry, dont know how to phrase it correctly

 

[Kalvaer]

the 5 sigma results means a discovery of a new Boson.. This is the first time since 1961.

However we do not know WHAT it is. YES it seems to fit into the expectations, but now we need to investigate what it is.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

If this is 100% the "God Particle".. kal, can you give an estimate on how long it will take to be able to "use" this particle in experiments? Sorry, dont know how to phrase it correctly

Can't ever be 100% sure as this is quantum physics after all but a 5 sigma level is 99.9995% certain, so yes it is the Higgs Boson(please don't call it the god particle if you want to be taken seriously). As for practical use, I highly doubt we will see one in our lifetime although stranger things have happened and manipulating the Higgs field would bring distinct advantages...

The theoretical implications of this discovery can't be ignored though as it pretty much confirms our standard particle theory is correct.

 

[poffle]

haha i wont use it in future

cool thanks

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

If this is 100% the "God Particle".. kal, can you give an estimate on how long it will take to be able to "use" this particle in experiments? Sorry, dont know how to phrase it correctly

Can't ever be 100% sure as this is quantum physics after all but a 5 sigma level is 99.9995% certain and it is in the predicted energy range as far as I can tell, so yes it is probably the Higgs Boson(please don't call it the god particle if you want to be taken seriously). As for practical use, I highly doubt we will see one in our lifetime although stranger things have happened and manipulating the Higgs field would bring distinct advantages...

The theoretical implications of this discovery can't be ignored though as it pretty much confirms our standard particle theory is correct.

 

[Kalvaer]

All that we know is there is a new boson. Theory predicts it should be a higgs, but if there are more than one, then which one, or are there more than one in the same range, or are they all there. Thats is what will now be the focus to verify.

What really peeved me off was the question in the press conference from china , about is it worth it continue in the current euro crisis with the LHC. Is the www worth it? Because without the LHC.. It might not exist, is cheap laser eye surgery worth it, because without the LHC, it wourldnt exist. Without QM, computers and our phones wouldnt exist, with out GR, we wouldnt have GPS' the list is endless.

Things like this are all spin offs of an experiment of this type, and discoveries like this allow every one to narrow the search, and while it might not seem relevant right now. 10 years later where we all take things like the web for granted, ask your selves.. Was it worth it.

If CERN was paid 1 cent for every dollar made since the www was concieved, we could build the new SLHC tomorrow, and still feed half of africa.

 

[Kalvaer]

haha i wont use it in future

cool thanks

Hehe..

 

[Geriatrix]

What really peeved me off was the question in the press conference from china , about is it worth it continue in the current euro crisis with the LHC. Is the www worth it? Because without the LHC.. It might not exist, is cheap laser eye surgery worth it, because without the LHC, it wourldnt exist. Without QM, computers and our phones wouldnt exist, with out GR, we wouldnt have GPS' the list is endless.

Things like this are all spin offs of an experiment of this type, and discoveries like this allow every one to narrow the search, and while it might not seem relevant right now. 10 years later where we all take things like the web for granted, ask your selves.. Was it worth it.

If CERN was paid 1 cent for every dollar made since the www was concieved, we could build the new SLHC tomorrow, and still feed half of africa.

You know what CERN needs? Someone to explain to all those ignoramus's out there what other little things had come out of this experiment other than some figures surrounding a boson. Get some interns to draw up an infographic, like those ones you get on Reddit, and send them en masse to all the media outlets in CERN's press release database.

 

[zippy]

All that we know is there is a new boson. Theory predicts it should be a higgs, but if there are more than one, then which one, or are there more than one in the same range, or are they all there. Thats is what will now be the focus to verify.

What really peeved me off was the question in the press conference from china , about is it worth it continue in the current euro crisis with the LHC. Is the www worth it? Because without the LHC.. It might not exist, is cheap laser eye surgery worth it, because without the LHC, it wourldnt exist. Without QM, computers and our phones wouldnt exist, with out GR, we wouldnt have GPS' the list is endless.

Things like this are all spin offs of an experiment of this type, and discoveries like this allow every one to narrow the search, and while it might not seem relevant right now. 10 years later where we all take things like the web for granted, ask your selves.. Was it worth it.

If CERN was paid 1 cent for every dollar made since the www was concieved, we could build the new SLHC tomorrow, and still feed half of africa.

It's perfectly valid for expenditure of this magnitude to be questioned. Resources are not unlimited and taxpayers deserve an explanation about how their taxes are spent. While I agree that funding for good science is needed, even in tough economic times, it can't ignore economic and political reality.

The people at CERN have a done a good job of convincing govt's to continue funding the project. They also need to be aware that this doesnt give them a licence to piss away money.