April Fools’ Day is over, but I’m still not that into the Higgs Boson. There are two reasons for this, one that is particular to me and where I am in my career, and the other more general.
The reason particular to me is that I’m already a fifth year graduate student, and finding the Higgs will take a long time — likely at least a couple of years of running at design luminosity, which will take a while to reach. (Luminosity is a way of measuring how quickly the acclerator is producing collisions.) So no matter how enthusiastic I were about the Higgs boson, it wouldn’t be a good project for me to take on right now; I need a project that I can do with the first year of data, because even then I’ll be taking longer-than-average to graduate.
But the Higgs isn’t my first choice for something to work on later, either, because just finding the Standard Model Higgs Boson won’t be as exciting as it sounds. We know the Higgs Mechanism is real: it relates the masses and interactions of the W and Z bosons to each other, and works extremely well. What we don’t know is what’s really behind that mechanism. The simplest possibility is the Standard Model Higgs field, with one Higgs boson. The next simplest possibility would be a Higgs doublet model, which is the minimum required by Supersymmetry and leads to 5 Higgs particles. (Why five? Well, it’s complicated, but here’s a numerological hint: 4 – 3 = 1 and 2*4 – 3 = 5. Basically, the Higgs field comes with four “degrees of freedom” at a time, but three of them are “eaten” by the W+, W-, and Z bosons to make them massive. Then the remaining one(s) become physical Higgs particles. I know it sounds completely crazy, but it’s more or less what the math says.) The Higgs field also might be a composite of some very massive fermions, and only look like the Standard Model at low energies. But anyway, the point is this: if the Higgs boson isn’t the Standard Model version, then there will be other exciting new particles to search for as well. But if it is the Standard Model version, finding it will be more like meeting an old friend than discovering a new particle: we know everything about it already, except its mass.
So personally, I’d rather go straight to searching for new particles, and skip the Higgs entirely.
Could you possibly find the Zed Lepton?
So is your implication here that some of these other particles would be easier to detect than the Higgs? (And yet, also hard enough to detect that they wouldn’t have already been seen at the Tevatron?)
If so, can you give any examples of particles which, if they exist, would be likely to show up in the first year of data? It would be nice to know what interested observers like me should be rooting for while we’re waiting to hear about the Higgs.
Some brief explanation of why these particles are easier to find would also be interesting. Is it that they’re produced in greater numbers? Less likely to be mistaken for already known particles? etc.
Thanks in advance.
Harbles: there’s already a “Zed” boson, so probably not.
Tim: Good questions. The brief answers to your questions in order are: Yes. (Yes.) Yes, I can. Yes, partly. Also yes, partly. Giving more complete answers will take a full entry to even do a semi-decent job, and I’ll try to get to it in the next few weeks.
Seth, thanks for the reply. I’m looking forward to reading your full post on the subject.
Something I am actually curious about is, how plausible do the people at the LHC consider it that they will find a dark matter candidate particle?
Hi Coin. The astrophysicists tell us that particle-based dark matter fits what they see rather well — and if it exists, it’s likely to be light enough to be produced at the LHC. So I’d say it’s a pretty good bet — it’s one of the things we might even find very quickly, but that depends on how it’s produced.