Physicists: New progress toward discovery of elusive Higgs boson

January 8, 2007

Gainesville, Fla. — A University of Florida physicist is among the scientists who today announced the world’s most precise single measurement of a particle seen as key to discovering the mass of the elusive Higgs boson, the still-missing keystone to the Standard Model of Physics.

Jacobo Konigsberg, UF physicist and spokesperson for the Collider Detector at Fermilab near Chicago, is among the scientists who today announce the new measurement of the W boson. That discovery leads to an estimate for the mass of the yet-undiscovered Higgs boson that is lighter than previously predicted, in principle making observation of this mysterious particle more likely by experiments at the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab.

Prior to today’s announcement, the European Center for Nuclear Research held the record for the most precise W boson mass measurement. Contrasting the method used by their experiments, physicists at the Collider Detector at Fermilab analyzed proton-antiproton collisions produced by Fermilab’s Tevatron, the world’s most powerful particle collider.

“The proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron result in a ‘dirty’ environment experimentally,” Konigsberg said. “Every collision produces hundreds of particles along with the W boson that need to be properly accounted for. That’s why our analysis is so challenging.”

Higgs boson particles are believed to serve as the mechanisms by which particles get mass. That makes them fundamental to the current theory of particle physics known as the Standard Model, but experiments have yet to confirm their existence.

Source: Jacobo Konigsberg, 630-840-3623, Konigsberg@phys.ufl.edu.