The discovery of the higgs boson

[2016-09-05 Mon 19:13:47] speaker: Mingming Yang event: Science in the Cafe, Singapore Science Center

Why is the higgs boson so elusive?

• need high energy collisions
• the probability of generating a higgs boson is low

Different types of higgs decay were checked independently, one of them is the higgs -> two photons decay

We can plot the two photons mass vs the number of events. If the higgs exists, there should be an excess of two photons mass at the higgs mass compared to the background.

The analysis process was carried out blind, without looking at the data from the expected range. Night of June 15, 2012 is the unblinding of the data from the expected range.

Detector is modified in 2012 and the collider is at a new energy level, hence the analysis method has to be customized from the one in 2011.