CERN Accelerating science

CMS ttH observation paper published in PRL!

The first observation of the simultaneous production of a Higgs boson with a top quark-antiquark pair is being published today in the journal Physical Review Letters (PRL). This major milestone, first reported by the CMS Collaboration in early April 2018, unambiguously demonstrates the interaction of the Higgs boson and top quarks, which are the heaviest known subatomic particles. It is an important step forward in our understanding of the origin of mass. The paper features as a PRL Editors’ Suggestion and also has a Physics Viewpoint article published about it.

An event candidate for the production of a top quark and top anti-quark pair in conjunction with a Higgs Boson in the CMS detector. The Higgs decays into a tau+ lepton and a tau- lepton; the tau+ in turn decays into hadrons and the tau- decays into an electron.  The decay product symbols are in blue. The top quark decays into three jets (sprays of lighter particles) whose names are given in purple. One of these is initiated by a b-quark. The top anti-quark decays into a muon and b-jet, whose names appear in red.  

Further reading:

[1] CMS ttH observation journal article: Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 231801 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.231801
[2] June 2018 CERN Courier article: http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/71524