Discovery of the Higgs Boson

The recent observation of the Higgs boson has been hailed as the scientific discovery of the century and led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics. This book describes the detailed science behind the decades-long search for this elusive particle at the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN and at the Tevatron at Fermilab and its subsequent discovery and characterization at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Written by physicists who played leading roles in this epic search and discovery, this book is an authoritative and pedagogical exposition of the portrait of the Higgs boson that has emerged from a large number of experimental measurements. As the first of its kind, this book should be of interest to graduate students and researchers in particle physics.

Contents:

• Preface

• The Higgs Boson in the Standard Model (A Djouadi and M Grazzini)

• Searches for the Standard Model Higgs Boson at the LEP Collider (P Igo-Kemenes and A L Read)

• Searches for the Standard Model Higgs Boson at the Tevatron Collider (W C Fisher and T R Junk)

• Overview of the Large Hadron Collider and of the ATLAS and CMS Experiments (A Nisati and V Sharma)

• Higgs Boson Observation and Measurements of Its Properties in the H → ZZ → 4ℓ Decay Mode (A Korytov and K Nikolopoulos)

• Observation of the Diphoton Decay of the Higgs Boson and Measurements of Its Properties (J Bendavid and K Tackmann)

• Observation of the Higgs Boson in the H → W+W-(*) → ℓ+νℓ-ν Final State (E Di Marco and J Strandberg)

• Evidence for Higgs Boson Decays to τ Leptons (M Bachtis and J Kroseberg)

• Search for the Higgs Boson in the bb Final State at the LHC (J Konigsberg and G Piacquadio)

• Higgs Boson Search in the WW → ℓνqq Final State (P Govoni and R Sandström)

• Higgs Boson Search in the ZZ → ℓℓνν and ℓqq Final States (C Gwilliam and A Vartak)

• Higgs Combination and Properties of the Higgs Boson (M Duehrssen and G Petrucciani)

• Summary and Outlook

• Appendices:

  • Statistical Methods (T R Junk, A Korytov, and A L Read)
  • Multivariate Analysis Techniques (J Bendavid, W C Fisher, and T R Junk)

• Acknowledgements

• About the Authors

Readership: Graduate students and researchers in particle physics.