This week the CMS collaboration will publish the results of its search for the Higgs boson that were presented at CERN in December 2011 [1].

Nine papers will be submitted for publication using the entire data sample of proton-proton collisions collected up to the end of 2011. These data amount to 4.7 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity [2]. Eight out of the nine papers discuss the individual analyses of a number of predicted Higgs decay channels. These papers include some improvements in the analyses, most notably in the photon pair decay channel [3].

The ninth paper, submitted today simultaneously with a similar paper by the ATLAS collaboration, presents the combined result of the individual channels [4].

The significance of the largest excess (at 124 GeV) has increased slightly to 2.1 standard deviations [5]. There is no substantive change in our conclusions: the question of the existence of the Standard Model Higgs boson can only be resolved with the collection of more data during 2012.

The ATLAS Collaboration submitted the ATLAS Higgs boson search results simultaneously.

[1] CMS seminar at CERN, 13th Dec 2011, including links to more details.

[2] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/july21/femtobarn-721.html

[3] Individual papers are posted here as they become available.

[4] CMS Paper on the "Combined results of searches for the standard model Higgs boson in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV"

[5] After taking into account the "look elsewhere effect"

Related links

• CMS public website: http://cern.ch/cms
• Collision event display images from the Higgs analysis
• CMS slides from the Higgs seminar at CERN, 13th Dec 2011
• CERN Press Release, 13th Dec 2011 [ Also in French ]
• CMS Higgs plots and results | CMS Higgs Physics Analysis Summary notes
• All CMS Physics Papers | CMS results | CMS Physics Analysis Summary notes
• About the search for the Higgs Boson in CMS | Higgs search terminology