A bound on the natural width of the Higgs boson

A bound on the natural width of the Higgs boson: In the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is expected to be very narrow: its width is roughly 4 MeV, a good 30,000 times smaller than the central mass of approximately 125 GeV...

The width is usually determined from the distribution of masses observed. In this case, however, the expected width is much smaller than the experimental resolution of the mass measurement...

A quantitative analysis leads to an upper bound on the Higgs width of ~4 times that of the Standard Model value, approximately 17 MeV. This is a huge improvement, of a factor of 200 over the previous bound.

A black hole in a bath: Big physics on a bench-top - physics-math - 10 March 2014 - New Scientist

A black hole in a bath: Big physics on a bench-top - physics-math - 10 March 2014 - New Scientist

Supersymmetry...  One of its central predictions is that there should be more than one Higgs particle... they might have found some clue as to where those extra particles might be – in superfluid helium-3... The discovered Higgs weighs in at around 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Studying the spectrum of excitations in the superfluid helium suggests Higgs particles should also exist at energies of 210 GeV and 325 GeV. These possibilities are not excluded by results collected so far at the LHC...

By concentrating laser light into a very small spot within a waveguide made of a glass block, he can temporarily change the refractive index of the glass so that it slows down subsequent laser pulses and ultimately repels them. "What makes these analogue experiments so powerful is that from a photon or a water wave's perspective, it has no way of distinguishing whether it is crossing the event horizon of a real black hole or is in a waveguide under some weird constraints," he says.

Higgs boson continues to be maddeningly well-behaved

Higgs boson continues to be maddeningly well-behaved: Today, experimentalists from CMS and the other main LHC detector ATLAS, armed with twice as much data as they had in July, told the Hadron Collider Physics symposium in Kyoto, Japan, that the number of tau particles detected has crept up. The new data can't yet rule out a deviation from the standard model but they do remove the main reason for thinking there was one in the first place...
...direct searches for new physics at the LHC have turned up empty too. Physicists presented searches for dozens of particles that would exist in a world governed by some of these new theories...
"The results really tell us that we're either not looking in the right place, or we're not looking in the right way, or maybe both..."

Researchers at SLAC find too many taus decay from bottom quarks to fit Standard Model

Researchers at SLAC find too many taus decay from bottom quarks to fit Standard Model: Instead of the 20% frequency rate predicted for D mesons, the researchers found a 31% rate (and a 25% rate for D* mesons instead of the predicted 23%)...

To explain the differences between the theories and observed results the researchers suggest that perhaps another Higgs Boson is at work; SUSY suggests there may be as many as four, though research at CERN is still ongoing to prove that what was observed earlier this year was in fact an actual Higgs.

Physicists propose factory to spew out Higgs particles

Physicists propose factory to spew out Higgs particles:   Muons are particles similar to electrons, but 200 times more massive. That means a muon-antimuon accelerator could reach the necessary energies over a far shorter distance.

With the putative Higgs checking in at about 125 gigaelectronvolts, you would need to bash together a muon and an antimuon with each having just over 60 GeV of energy. "That should be doable with a machine 100 times smaller than the LHC," says Rubbia. The result would be a "Higgs factory" producing the particle and little else.

What if there is no Higgs boson?

What if there is no Higgs boson?:  Physicists are only looking for the Higgs particle because it is the easiest way to access the field. If they don't see it, then it suggests the field is different from the one predicted by the standard model. Normally, particles in fields are like ripples in ponds – photons are ripples in the electromagnetic field, for example. But if the field is more like molasses than water, then the ripples die away too quickly for us to detect.

That means matter might get its mass from a thick Higgs-like field that has no associated particle. To get such a goopy field, theorists need to add in more exotic possibilities – such as new particles or forces of nature...

The existence of a new force, called technicolour, could also give particles mass without the need for a Higgs boson. Technicolour would act like a heavy-duty version of the strong nuclear force, which binds quarks together in the nuclei of atoms. The technicolour force would fill space with pairs of still more new particles, which would form a soup through which other particles would travel, gaining mass in the process....

The existence of a fourth dimension of space, beyond the three we experience, could explain why particles have different masses – a fact that is usually attributed to the Higgs boson.

Hologram revolution: The theory changing all physics - physics-math - 13 July 2011 - New Scientist

Hologram revolution: The theory changing all physics: Leonard Susskind of Stanford University in California, one of the original architects of the holographic principle, describes the duality as the "new orthodoxy". Skenderis is convinced that we are only just beginning to see its potential. "If we look forward to 50 years from now, we will see this period as a precursor to a time when physics is totally reformulated in the language of holography," he says. "Once the theory is properly fleshed out, we will be able to apply it to almost any problem."

Scientists Abuzz Over Controversial Rumor that God Particle Has Been Detected | Quantum Physics & Particle Physics | Large Hadron Collider & Higgs Boson | LiveScience

Scientists Abuzz Over Controversial Rumor that God Particle Has Been Detected | Quantum Physics & Particle Physics | Large Hadron Collider & Higgs Boson | LiveScience: "Some physicists say the note may be a hoax, while others believe the 'detection' is likely a statistical anomaly that will disappear upon further study. But the find would be a huge particle-physics breakthrough, if it holds up..."

"Its production rate is much higher than that expected for the Higgs boson in the Standard Model," Stone told SPACE.com in an email interview. So the signal may be evidence of some other particle, Stone added, "which in some sense would be even more interesting, or it could be the result of new physics beyond the Standard Model."

Mystery signal at Fermilab hints at 'technicolour' force - physics-math - 07 April 2011 - New Scientist

Mystery signal at Fermilab hints at 'technicolour' force : Just over 20 years ago, Lane, along with Fermilab physicist Estia Eichten, predicted that experiments would see just such a signal. Lane and Eichten were working on a theory known as technicolour, which proposes the existence of a fifth fundamental force in addition to the four already known: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Technicolour is very similar to the strong force, which binds quarks together in the nuclei of atoms, only it operates at much higher energies. It is also able to give particles their mass – rendering the Higgs boson unnecessary.

The new force comes with a zoo of new particles. Lane and Eichten's model predicted that a technicolour particle called a technirho would often decay into a W boson and another particle called a technipion.

In a new paper, Lane, Eichten and Fermilab physicist Adam Martin suggest that a technipion with a mass of about 160 GeV could be the mysterious particle producing the two jets. "If this is real, I think people will give up on the idea of looking for the Higgs and begin exploring this rich world of new particles," Lane says.

Graphene Could Help Physicists Probe the Higgs Boson's Secrets | Popular Science

Graphene Could Help Physicists Probe the Higgs Boson's Secrets | Popular Science: "When you compress graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, it ripples. This is related to the graphene’s energy potentials. Spontaneous symmetry breaking — fluctuations that dictate what happens next — cause the ripple effect.
Pablo San-Jose, Francisco Guinea, and Jose Gonzalez at Madrid's Institute for Material Science say this is analagous to the symmetry breaking that happened in a blink after the Big Bang."

Short Sharp Science: Higgs boson: is a result imminent?

Short Sharp Science: Higgs boson: is a result imminent?: ""It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal. Some say a three-sigma effect, others do not make explicit claims but talk of a unexpected result," writes Dorigo."