Rare Higgs boson decay discovered at the Large Hadron Collider

For the first time, the Higgs boson was actively talked about in the world scientific community back in 2012, when it was first discovered in the chaos of particles that the Large Hadron Collider generates at CERN.

This event was of historical importance, since the Higgs boson is endowed with unique properties, namely, it “gives” mass to other elementary particles.

Already this year, analyzing the next portion of the data obtained during the experiment related to the compact muon solenoid (CMS), evidence was found at the LHC of the splitting of the Higgs boson into a pair of particles called muons.

The muon is a somewhat heavier type of electron and belongs to such classes of particles as fermions.

This separation is described in the Standard Model, according to which all particles are subdivided into fermions and bosons. So it is generally accepted that fermions are the fundamental building blocks of all matter, and bosons are energy carriers.

In addition, Muon belongs to the so-called second-generation particles. First generation fermions are the lightest elements such as electrons. Elementary particles of the second and third generation are quite capable of undergoing the decay process and become particles of the first generation.

An analysis of the setup data demonstrated the first ever interaction of the Higgs Boson with second-generation fermions. In addition, data analysis has shown that the decay time of Higgs pairs is indeed proportional to the square of the fermion mass.

Despite the complexity of the perception of this discovery, it is of great importance for science. After all, data analysis can reliably confirm the fact that the Higgs boson does give the rest of the fundamental particles mass.

In addition, if the analysis of the data reveals any deviation in the data, then it will become direct evidence of the presence of new states of matter that differ from the predictions of the Standard models.

How the Higgs boson "bestows" mass on particles

To try to understand this unimaginable process, one can imagine that the Higgs Boson is a kind of thick syrup and elementary particles that fly through it, as it were, become overgrown with this "syrup" and thus gain their mass.

And the slower the speed of movement of a particular particle, the more mass it receives in the end.

Scientists shared their results at the 40th International Conference on High Energy Physics, which was held in August 2020.

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