CERN’s ATLAS and CMS collaborations have presented initial evidence for a rare decay of the Higgs boson into a Z boson and a photon, marking a significant step in particle physics. Although this discovery does not reach the conventional statistical significance, it offers valuable insights into potential new particles and physics beyond the Standard Model. Since the Higgs boson’s discovery in 2012, extensive research has focused on its properties and different decay modes.
At the recent LHCP conference, the teams revealed their collaborative efforts, leveraging combined data from the second run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (2015-2018). This collaboration increased the statistical precision of their search, leading to evidence of the Higgs decay, characterized by a statistical significance of 3.4 standard deviations. They identified the Z boson through its decay into pairs of muons or electrons, a process occurring in about 6.6% of cases.
The researchers used advanced techniques, including machine learning, to differentiate between signal and background events. The findings open the door for further investigations into the nature of the Higgs boson and possibly undiscovered particles, with ongoing and future LHC runs expected to enhance the precision of these tests.
