Physics experiment finds tantalizing hint of undiscovered particles
Physicists at CERN's CMS detector searched for exotic particles beyond the standard model and found a possible signal 3.3 times stronger than random chance—but not strong enough to confirm discovery yet. The finding could reshape how scientists search for new physics, though confirming it will require more data and independent verification from competing experiments.
Originaltitel: Search for a new scalar resonance decaying to a Higgs boson and another new scalar particle in the final state with two bottom quarks and two photons in proton-proton collisions at TeV
<p>A search is presented for a new scalar resonance, X, decaying to a standard model Higgs boson and another new scalar particle, Y, in the final state where the Higgs boson decays to a pair, while the Y particle decays to a pair of photons. The search is performed in the mass range 240–1000 GeV for the resonance X, and in the mass range 70–800 GeV for the particle Y, using proton-proton collision data collected by the CMS experiment at √<em>s</em> = 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 132 fb<sup>−1</sup>. In general, the data are found to be compatible with the standard model expectation. Observed (expected) upper limits at 95% confidence level on the product of the production cross section and the relevant branching fraction are extracted for the X → YH process, and are found to be within the range of 0.05–2.69 (0.08–1.94) fb, depending on m<sub>X</sub> and m<sub>Y</sub>. The most significant deviation from the background-only hypothesis is observed for X and Y masses of 300 and 77 GeV, respectively, with a local (global) significance of 3.33 (0.65) standard deviations.</p>