Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Penny on 06/09/2008 15:33:25

Title: How will scientists recognise a Higgs Boson?
Post by: Penny on 06/09/2008 15:33:25

Penny asked the Naked Scientists:

How the the physicists know if they find a Higgs boson? How do they what to
look for?

What do you think?

Title: How will scientists recognise a Higgs Boson?
Post by: rich42 on 07/09/2008 18:56:16

The Higgs Boson, if it is discovered at LHC, will be identified through its decay products. It will almost certainly be unstable with a very short decay time (due to the fact that it is not seen in a stable form in nature) and the current predicted decay chain (from supersymmetry theory, which predicts the Higgs Boson in the first place) ends up with the production of 4 muons. A collision which seems to produce 4 muons alone with a total energy of above 100GeV will be a very strong candidate.
THe same is true about almost all of the high energy particles produced from this kind of collision, very few of which will survive long enough to reach the detector.

Richard