{"id":3770,"date":"2016-07-25T07:15:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-25T07:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/?p=3770"},"modified":"2017-02-19T01:12:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T01:12:09","slug":"750-gev-bump-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.particlebites.com\/?p=3770","title":{"rendered":"750 GeV Bump Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
Article: <\/strong>Search for resonant production of high-mass photon pairs in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 8 and 13 TeV
\nAuthors:<\/strong> CMS Collaboration
\nReference:<\/strong>\u00a0arXiv:1606.04093<\/a> (Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett)<\/div>\n

Following the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2012, high-energy physicists asked the same question that they have asked for years: \u201cwhat\u2019s next?\u201d This time, however, the answer to that question was not nearly as obvious as it had been in the past. When the top quark was discovered at Fermilab in 1995, the answer was clear \u201cthe Higgs is next.\u201d And when the W and Z bosons were discovered at CERN in 1983, physicists were saying \u201cthe top quark is right around the corner.\u201d However, because the Higgs is the last piece of the puzzle that is the Standard Model, there is no clear answer to the question \u201cwhat\u2019s next?\u201d At the moment, the honest answer to this question is\u00a0\u201cwe aren\u2019t quite sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Higgs completes\u00a0the Standard Model, which would be fantastic news were it not for the fact that there remain unambiguous indications of physics beyond the Standard Model. Among these is dark matter, which makes up roughly one-quarter of the energy content of the universe. Neutrino mass, the Hierarchy Problem, and the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe are among other favorite arguments in favor of new physics.\u00a0The salient point is clear: the Standard Model, though newly-completed, is not a complete description of nature, so we must press on.<\/p>\n

\"Background-only<\/a>
Background-only p-values for a new scalar particle in the CMS diphoton data. The dip at 750 GeV may be early evidence for a new particle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Near the end of Run I of the LHC (2013) and the beginning of Run II (2015), the focus was on searches for new physics. While searches for supersymmetry and the direct production of dark matter drew a considerable deal of focus, towards the end of 2015, a small excess \u2013\u00a0or, as physicists commonly refer to them, a bump \u2013\u00a0began to materialize in decays to two photons seen by the CMS Collaboration. This observation was made all the more exciting by the fact that ATLAS observed an analogous bump in the same channel with roughly the same significance. The paper in question here, published June 2016, presents a combination of the 2012 (8 TeV) and 2015 (13 TeV) CMS data; it represents the most recent public CMS result on the so-called \u201cdi-photon resonance<\/a>\u201d. (See also Roberto’s recent ParticleBite<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This\u00a0analysis searches for events with two photons, a relatively clean\u00a0signal. If there is a heavy particle which decays into two photons, then we expect to see an excess of events near the mass of this particle.\u00a0In this case, CMS and ATLAS have observed an excess of events near 750 GeV in the di-photon channel. While some searches for new physics rely upon hard kinematic requirements or tailor their search to a certain signal model, the signal here is simple: look for an event with two photons and nothing else. However, because this is a model-independent search with loose selection requirements, great care must be taken to understand the background (events that mimic the signal) in order to observe an excess, should one exist. In this case, the background processes are direct production of two photons and events where one or more photon is actually a misidentified jet. For example,\u00a0a neutral pion\u00a0may be mistaken for a photon.<\/p>\n

Part of the excitement from this excess is due to the fact that ATLAS and CMS both observed corresponding bump sin their datasets, a useful cross-check that the bump has a chance of being real. A bigger part of the excitement, however, are the physics implications of a new, heavy particle that decays into two photons. A particle decaying to two photons would likely be either spin-0 or spin-2 (in principle, it could be of spin-N where N is an integer and N \u2265 2). Models exist in which the aforementioned Higgs boson, h<\/em>(125), is one of a family of Higgs particles, and these so-called \u201cexpanded Higgs sectors\u201d predict heavy, spin-0 particles which would decay to two photons. Moreover, in models which there are extra spatial dimensions, we would expect to find a spin-2 resonance \u2013\u00a0a graviton \u2013 decaying to two photons. Both of these scenarios would be extremely exciting, if realized by experiment, which contributed to the buzz surrounding this signal.<\/p>\n

So, where do we stand today? After considering the data from 2015 (at 13 TeV center-of-mass energy) and 2012 (at 8 TeV center-of-mass energy) together, CMS reports an excess with a local significance of 3.4-sigma. However, the global significance \u2013 which takes into account the \u201clook-elsewhere effect\u201d and is the figure of merit here \u2013 is a mere 1.6-sigma. While the outlook is not extremely encouraging, more data is needed to definitively rule on the status of the di-photon resonance. CMS and ATLAS should have just that, more data, in time for the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) 2016 in early August. At that point, we should have sufficient data to determine the fate of the di-photon excess. For now, the di-photon bump serves as a reminder of the unpredictability of new physics signatures, and it might suggest the need for more model-independent searches for new physics, especially as the LHC continues to chip away at the available supersymmetry phase space without any discoveries.<\/p>\n

References and Further Reading<\/strong><\/p>\n