{"id":5639,"date":"2013-03-14T11:16:34","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T15:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5639"},"modified":"2013-03-14T11:16:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T15:16:47","slug":"disappearing-gammas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5639","title":{"rendered":"Disappearing gammas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The CMS data on the Higgs in the gamma-gamma channel has been released this morning, see <a href=\"http:\/\/moriond.in2p3.fr\/QCD\/2013\/ThursdayMorning\/Ochando.pptx\">slides from a talk at Moriond<\/a>.  Basically the excess over the SM prediction seen in this channel in earlier data is gone, with CMS reporting ratios to the SM predicted value of .78 +\/- .27 using one sort of analysis, 1.11 +\/- .31 using another, so, naively averaging, say .95.  ATLAS sees 1.65, so a naive combination would give 1.3, only about one sigma high, very consistent with the SM.<\/p>\n<p>Amusingly, the better than 4 sigma signal CMS was advertising last summer in this channel that was part of the case for the discovery announcement has largely vanished in the new 8 TeV data.  With one analysis method, they see only a 2 sigma signal in the 8 TeV data.  If they had been working with this new, larger and better, data set instead of the older, smaller 7 TeV data set, the Higgs discovery claims might not have been possible last summer.   Of course, the CMS + ATLAS combined gamma-gamma results are very strong evidence for a Higgs signal, and the ZZ results are overwhelming, so the existence of a new particle is not in doubt.  This is actually what you expect if a SM Higgs is there: you should get reversion to the mean and disappearance of the earlier too large observed excesses.<\/p>\n<p>CERN has a press release out today which is getting a log of attention, headlined<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.interactions.org\/cms\/?pid=1032641\">New results indicate that particle discovered at CERN is a Higgs boson<\/a>.  This emphasizes results about the spin, but the new gamma-gamma results are what is significant, as they remove the one anomaly that was getting a lot of attention from theorists hoping for some kind of violation of SM behavior. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CMS data on the Higgs in the gamma-gamma channel has been released this morning, see slides from a talk at Moriond. Basically the excess over the SM prediction seen in this channel in earlier data is gone, with CMS &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5639\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experimental-hep-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5641,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639\/revisions\/5641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}