Tevatron closer to finding the Higgs

As we demonstrated by a photograph on Monday, the discovery of the Higgs boson at Fermilab may be approaching.

• WZ boson discovery inches Fermilab closer to Higgs

Yesterday, Elliot Lipeles who is a postdoc at UCSD announced that the sensitivity has increased and further data could allow to announce a discovery in a foreseeable future.

In June 2006, the D0 team has detected WZ production but the 3.3-sigma data sample was insufficient for an official discovery.

CDF decided to get ahead once again. Yesterday, they announced 16 events with W and Z in the final state while the background for the "three lepton plus a neutrino" final states where you neglect some characteristically electroweak diagrams is 2.7 events only. The WZ production is an excellent playground to test the cubic boson couplings in the electroweak theory. For the Higgs discovery, however, one needs to look at the WW final states. See another Lipeles' PDF talk here.

Today, the DOE have assigned the Fermilab contract to the usual alliance with the University of Chicago in it.