Friday, September 8, 2023

Strengthening Evidence Of Another Predicted Higgs Boson Decay Channel

This is now reasonably strong (3.4 sigma) evidence from the LHC of Higgs boson decays to a Z boson and a photon at a rate consistent with the Standard Model predicted branching fraction for decays of this kind.

This was first hinted at in April of 2022, and this report reiterates results announced in May of this year. 
The first evidence for the Higgs boson decay to a Z boson and a photon is presented, with a statistical significance of 3.4 standard deviations. The result is derived from a combined analysis of the searches performed by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations with proton-proton collision data sets collected at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) from 2015 to 2018. These correspond to integrated luminosities of around 140 fb−1 for each experiment, at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The measured signal yield is 2.2±0.7 times the Standard Model prediction, and agrees with the theoretical expectation within 1.9 standard deviations.
ATLAS, CMS Collaborations, "Evidence for the Higgs boson decay to a Z boson and a photon at the LHC" arXiv:2309.03501 (September 7, 2023).

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