The Higgs boson, a fundamental particle discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a dozen years ago, is still not fully understood due to the challenges in observing and computing its properties. A recent achievement by an international group of theoretical physicists, including the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN), has provided new insights into the origin of the Higgs boson.
Their research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, focuses on the theoretical determination of the Higgs boson cross section in gluon-gluon collisions, which are responsible for about 90% of Higgs boson production. The team aimed to account for certain corrections that are usually neglected due to their small contribution, but which significantly impact the active cross section for Higgs boson production.
The Standard Model, a complex theoretical structure developed in the 1970s, describes the currently known elementary particles and electromagnetic and nuclear forces. The discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle crucial for the mechanism that gives masses to other elementary particles, was a significant milestone in the creation of the Standard Model.
The team’s findings suggest that the values of the active cross section for Higgs boson production, as determined by their group and measured in previous LHC collisions, are practically the same, given current computational and measurement uncertainties. This indicates that no signs of new physics are visible in the mechanisms responsible for the formation of Higgs bosons, at least for the time being.
However, the team’s work does not definitively rule out the presence of new physics in the phenomena accompanying the birth of the Higgs boson. As data from the fourth research cycle of the LHC becomes available, physicists may be able to narrow down measurement uncertainties, potentially revealing discrepancies between the measured and theoretical cross sections for Higgs production.
The Standard Model, which does not explain gravity or answer fundamental questions such as why particles have the masses they do, may feel safer than ever, but the search for new physics continues. The LHC’s increasing number of observations of new particle collisions may provide the necessary data to narrow down measurement uncertainties and potentially reveal new physics.
