The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle,[9][10] is an elementary

particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum

excitation of the Higgs field,[11][12] one of the fields in particle physics
theory.[12] In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson
with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge
that couples to (interacts with) mass.[13] It is also very unstable, decaying into
other particles almost immediately.

The Higgs field is a scalar field, with two neutral and two electrically charged
components that form a complex doublet of the weak isospin SU(2) symmetry. Its
"Mexican hat-shaped" potential leads it to take a nonzero value everywhere
(including otherwise empty space), which breaks the weak isospin symmetry of the
electroweak interaction, and via the Higgs mechanism gives mass to many particles.

Both the field and the boson are named after physicist Peter Higgs, who in 1964,
along with five other scientists in three teams, proposed the Higgs mechanism, a
way that some particles can acquire mass. (All fundamental particles that were
known at the time[c] should be massless at very high energies, but fully explaining
how some particles gain mass at lower energies had been extremely difficult.) If
these ideas were correct, a particle known as a scalar boson should also exist,
with certain properties. This particle was called the Higgs boson, and could be
used to test whether the Higgs field was the correct explanation.

After a 40 year search, a subatomic particle with the expected properties was
discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The new particle was subsequently confirmed
to match the expected properties of a Higgs boson. Physicists from two of the three
teams, Peter Higgs and François Englert, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in
2013 for their theoretical predictions. Although Higgs's name has come to be
associated with this theory, several researchers between about 1960 and 1972
independently developed different parts of it.

In the mainstream media, the Higgs boson is sometimes called the "God particle"
after the 1993 book The God Particle by Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman,[14] although
the nickname has been criticised by many physicists.[15][16]

Introduction
Standard Model of particle physics
Standard Model of Elementary Particles.svg
About this image
Elementary particles of the Standard Model
Background
Constituents
Limitations
Scientists
vte
The Standard Model
Physicists explain the fundamental particles and forces of our universe in terms of
the Standard Model – a widely accepted framework based on quantum field theory that
predicts almost all known particles and forces other than gravity with great
accuracy. (A separate theory, general relativity, is used for gravity.) In the
Standard Model, the particles and forces in nature (other than gravity) arise from
properties of quantum fields, known as gauge invariance and symmetries. Forces in
the Standard Model are transmitted by particles known as gauge bosons.[17][18]

Gauge invariant theories and symmetries

"It is only slightly overstating the case to say that physics is the study of
symmetry" – Philip Anderson, Nobel Prize Physics[19]
Gauge invariant theories are theories which have a useful feature, that some kinds
of changes to the value of certain items do not make any difference to the outcomes
or the measurements we make. An example is that changing voltages in an
electromagnet by +100 Volts, does not cause any change to the magnetic field it
produces. Similarly, measuring the speed of light in vacuum seems to give the
identical result whatever the location in time and space, and whatever the local
gravitational field.

In these kinds of theories, the gauge is an item whose value we can change, the
fact that some changes leave the results we measure unchanged means it is a gauge
invariant theory, and symmetries are the specific kinds of changes to the gauge,
which have this effect of leaving measurements unchanged. (More precisely, these
transformations of the gauge component do not change the energy). Symmetries of
this kind are powerful tools for deep understanding of the fundamental forces and
particles of our physical world, and gauge invariance is therefore an important
property within particle physics theory. They are closely connected to conservation
laws, and are described mathematically using group theory. Quantum field theory and
the Standard Model are both gauge invariant theories – meaning they focus on
properties of our universe that demonstrate this property of gauge invariance, and
the symmetries which are involved.

The problem of gauge boson mass

Quantum field theories based on gauge invariance had been used with great success
in understanding the electromagnetic and strong forces, but by around 1960 all
attempts to create a gauge invariant theory for the weak force (and its combination
with the electromagnetic force, known together as the electroweak interaction) had
consistently failed, with gauge theories thereby starting to fall into disrepute as
a result. The problem was that the symmetry requirements for these two forces
incorrectly predicted that the weak force's gauge bosons (W and Z) would have zero
mass. But experiments showed that the W and Z gauge bosons had non-zero mass.[20]

A further problem was that many promising solutions seemed to require extra
particles known as Goldstone bosons to exist. But evidence suggested these did not
exist either. This meant that either gauge invariance was an incorrect approach, or
something unknown was giving the weak force's W and Z bosons their mass, and doing
it in a way that did not create Goldstone bosons. By the late 1950s and early
1960s, physicists were still completely at a loss how to resolve these issues, or
how to create a comprehensive theory for particle physics.

Symmetry breaking
In the late 1950s, Yoichiro Nambu recognised that spontaneous symmetry breaking, a
process where a symmetric system becomes asymmetric, could occur under certain
conditions.[d] Symmetry breaking is when a change that previously didn't change the
measured results (it was originally a "symmetry") now does change the measured
results (it's now "broken" and no longer a symmetry). In 1962 physicist Philip
Anderson, an expert in condensed matter physics, observed that symmetry breaking
played a role in superconductivity, and suggested it could also be part of the
answer to the problem of gauge invariance in particle physics.

Specifically, Anderson suggested that the Goldstone bosons that would result from
symmetry breaking might instead, in some circumstances, be "absorbed" by the
massless W and Z bosons. If so, perhaps the Goldstone bosons would not exist, and
the W and Z bosons could gain mass, solving both problems at once. Similar
behaviour was already theorised in superconductivity.[21] In 1963, this was shown
to be theoretically possible by physicists Abraham Klein and Benjamin Lee, at least
for some limited (non-relativistic) cases. These findings were formally published
in April 1963 (Anderson) and March 1964 (Klein and Lee).

Higgs mechanism
Main articles: Higgs mechanism and Standard Model
Following the 1963 and early 1964 papers, three groups of researchers independently
developed these theories more completely, in what became known as the 1964 PRL
symmetry breaking papers. All three groups reached similar conclusions and for all
cases, not just some limited cases. They showed that the conditions for electroweak
symmetry would be "broken" if an unusual type of field existed throughout the
universe, and indeed, there would be no Goldstone bosons and some existing bosons
would acquire mass.

The field required for this to happen (which was purely hypothetical at the time)
became known as the Higgs field (after Peter Higgs, one of the researchers) and the
mechanism by which it led to symmetry breaking, known as the Higgs mechanism. A key
feature of the necessary field is that it would take less energy for the field to
have a non-zero value than a zero value, unlike all other known fields, therefore,
the Higgs field has a non-zero value (or vacuum expectation) everywhere. This non-
zero value could in theory break electroweak symmetry. It was the first proposal
capable of showing how the weak force gauge bosons could have mass despite their
governing symmetry, within a gauge invariant theory.

Although these ideas did not gain much initial support or attention, by 1972 they
had been developed into a comprehensive theory and proved capable of giving
"sensible" results that accurately described particles known at the time, and
which, with exceptional accuracy, predicted several other particles discovered
during the following years.[e] During the 1970s these theories rapidly became the
Standard Model of particle physics.

Higgs field
The Standard Model includes a field of the kind needed to "break" electroweak
symmetry and give particles their correct mass. This field, called the "Higgs
Field", exists throughout space, and it breaks some symmetry laws of the
electroweak interaction, triggering the Higgs mechanism. It therefore causes the W
and Z gauge bosons of the weak force to be massive at all temperatures below an
extreme high value.[f] When the weak force bosons acquire mass, this affects the
distance they can freely travel, which becomes very small, also matching
experimental findings.[g] Furthermore, it was later realised that the same field
would also explain, in a different way, why other fundamental constituents of
matter (including electrons and quarks) have mass.

Unlike all other known fields such as the electromagnetic field, the Higgs field is
a scalar field, and has a non-zero average value in vacuum.

The "central problem"

There was not yet any direct evidence that the Higgs field existed, but even
without direct proof, the accuracy of its predictions led scientists to believe the
theory might be true. By the 1980s, the question of whether the Higgs field
existed, and therefore whether the entire Standard Model was correct, had come to
be regarded as one of the most important unanswered questions in particle physics.

For many decades, scientists had no way to determine whether the Higgs field
existed, because the technology needed for its detection did not exist at that
time. If the Higgs field did exist, then it would be unlike any other known
fundamental field, but it also was possible that these key ideas, or even the
entire Standard Model, were somehow incorrect.[h]

The existence of the Higgs field became the last unverified part of the Standard
Model of particle physics, and for several decades was considered "the central
problem in particle physics".[23][24]

The hypothesised Higgs theory made several key predictions.[e][25]: 

22  One crucial
prediction was that a matching particle, called the "Higgs boson", should also
exist. Proving the existence of the Higgs boson would prove whether the Higgs field
existed, and therefore finally prove whether the Standard Model's explanation was
correct. Therefore, there was an extensive search for the Higgs boson, as a way to
prove the Higgs field itself existed.[11][12]

Search and discovery

Although the Higgs field would exist everywhere, proving its existence was far from
easy. In principle, it can be proved to exist by detecting its excitations, which
manifest as Higgs particles (the Higgs boson), but these are extremely difficult to
produce and detect, due to the energy required to produce them and their very rare
production even if the energy is sufficient. It was therefore several decades
before the first evidence of the Higgs boson could be found. Particle colliders,
detectors, and computers capable of looking for Higgs bosons took more than 30
years (c. 1980~2010) to develop.

The importance of this fundamental question led to a 40-year search, and the
construction of one of the world's most expensive and complex experimental
facilities to date, CERN's Large Hadron Collider,[26] in an attempt to create Higgs
bosons and other particles for observation and study. On 4 July 2012, the discovery
of a new particle with a mass between 125 and 127 GeV/c2 was announced; physicists
suspected that it was the Higgs boson.[27][i] [28][29]

Since then, the particle has been shown to behave, interact, and decay in many of
the ways predicted for Higgs particles by the Standard Model, as well as having
even parity and zero spin,[7][8] two fundamental attributes of a Higgs boson. This
also means it is the first elementary scalar particle discovered in nature.[30]

By March 2013, the existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed, and therefore, the
concept of some type of Higgs field throughout space is strongly supported.[27][29]
[7]

The presence of the field, now confirmed by experimental investigation, explains

why some fundamental particles have mass, despite the symmetries controlling their
interactions implying that they should be massless. It also resolves several other
long-standing puzzles, such as the reason for the extremely short distance
travelled by the weak force bosons, and therefore the weak force's extremely short
range.

As of 2018, in-depth research shows the particle continuing to behave in line with
predictions for the Standard Model Higgs boson. More studies are needed to verify
with higher precision that the discovered particle has all of the properties
predicted, or whether, as described by some theories, multiple Higgs bosons exist.
[31]

The nature and properties of this field are now being investigated further, using
more data collected at the LHC.[32]

Interpretation
Various analogies have been used to describe the Higgs field and boson, including
analogies with well-known symmetry-breaking effects such as the rainbow and prism,
electric fields, and ripples on the surface of water.

Other analogies based on resistance of macro objects moving through media (such as
people moving through crowds, or some objects moving through syrup or molasses) are
commonly used but misleading, since the Higgs field does not actually resist
particles, and the effect of mass is not caused by resistance.

Overview of Higgs boson and field properties

The "Mexican hat-shaped" potential of the Higgs field is responsible for some
particles gaining mass.
In the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is a massive scalar boson whose mass must be
found experimentally. Its mass has been determined to be 125.35±0.15 GeV/c2.[33] It
is the only particle that remains massive even at very high energies. It has zero
spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge, and it
couples to (interacts with) mass.[13] It is also very unstable, decaying into other
particles almost immediately via several possible pathways.

The Higgs field is a scalar field, with two neutral and two electrically charged
components that form a complex doublet of the weak isospin SU(2) symmetry. Unlike
any other known quantum field, it has a "Mexican hat-shaped" potential. This shape
means that below extremely high energies of about 159.5±1.5 GeV[34] such as those
seen during the first picosecond (10−12 s) of the Big Bang, the Higgs field in its
ground state takes less energy to have a nonzero vacuum expectation (value) than a
zero value. Therefore in today's universe the Higgs field has a nonzero value
everywhere (including otherwise empty space). This nonzero value in turn breaks the
weak isospin SU(2) symmetry of the electroweak interaction everywhere. (Technically
the non-zero expectation value converts the Lagrangian's Yukawa coupling terms into
mass terms.) When this happens, three components of the Higgs field are "absorbed"
by the SU(2) and U(1) gauge bosons (the "Higgs mechanism") to become the
longitudinal components of the now-massive W and Z bosons of the weak force. The
remaining electrically neutral component either manifests as a Higgs boson, or may
couple separately to other particles known as fermions (via Yukawa couplings),
causing these to acquire mass as well.[35]

Significance
Evidence of the Higgs field and its properties has been extremely significant for
many reasons. The importance of the Higgs boson is largely that it is able to be
examined using existing knowledge and experimental technology, as a way to confirm
and study the entire Higgs field theory.[11][12] Conversely, proof that the Higgs
field and boson did not exist would have also been significant.

Particle physics
Validation of the Standard Model
The Higgs boson validates the Standard Model through the mechanism of mass
generation. As more precise measurements of its properties are made, more advanced
extensions may be suggested or excluded. As experimental means to measure the
field's behaviours and interactions are developed, this fundamental field may be
better understood. If the Higgs field had not been discovered, the Standard Model
would have needed to be modified or superseded.

Related to this, a belief generally exists among physicists that there is likely to
be "new" physics beyond the Standard Model, and the Standard Model will at some
point be extended or superseded. The Higgs discovery, as well as the many measured
collisions occurring at the LHC, provide physicists a sensitive tool to search
their data for any evidence that the Standard Model seems to fail, and could
provide considerable evidence guiding researchers into future theoretical
developments.

Symmetry breaking of the electroweak interaction

Below an extremely high temperature, electroweak symmetry breaking causes the
electroweak interaction to manifest in part as the short-ranged weak force, which
is carried by massive gauge bosons. In the history of the universe, electroweak
symmetry breaking is believed to have happened at about 1 picosecond (10−12 s)
after the Big Bang, when the universe was at a temperature 159.5±1.5 GeV/kB.[36]
This symmetry breaking is required for atoms and other structures to form, as well
as for nuclear reactions in stars, such as the Sun. The Higgs field is responsible
for this symmetry breaking.
Particle mass acquisition
The Higgs field is pivotal in generating the masses of quarks and charged leptons
(through Yukawa coupling) and the W and Z gauge bosons (through the Higgs
mechanism).

It is worth noting that the Higgs field does not "create" mass out of nothing
(which would violate the law of conservation of energy), nor is the Higgs field
responsible for the mass of all particles. For example, approximately 99% of the
mass of baryons (composite particles such as the proton and neutron), is due
instead to quantum chromodynamic binding energy, which is the sum of the kinetic
energies of quarks and the energies of the massless gluons mediating the strong
interaction inside the baryons.[37] In Higgs-based theories, the property of "mass"
is a manifestation of potential energy transferred to fundamental particles when
they interact ("couple") with the Higgs field, which had contained that mass in the
form of energy.[38]

Scalar fields and extension of the Standard Model

The Higgs field is the only scalar (spin 0) field to be detected; all the other
fields in the Standard Model are spin 1⁄2 fermions or spin 1 bosons. According to
Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of CERN when the Higgs boson was discovered,
this existence proof of a scalar field is almost as important as the Higgs's role
in determining the mass of other particles. It suggests that other hypothetical
scalar fields suggested by other theories, from the inflaton to quintessence, could
perhaps exist as well.[39][40]

Cosmology
Inflaton
There has been considerable scientific research on possible links between the Higgs
field and the inflaton – a hypothetical field suggested as the explanation for the
expansion of space during the first fraction of a second of the universe (known as
the "inflationary epoch"). Some theories suggest that a fundamental scalar field
might be responsible for this phenomenon; the Higgs field is such a field, and its
existence has led to papers analysing whether it could also be the inflaton
responsible for this exponential expansion of the universe during the Big Bang.
Such theories are highly tentative and face significant problems related to
unitarity, but may be viable if combined with additional features such as large
non-minimal coupling, a Brans–Dicke scalar, or other "new" physics, and they have
received treatments suggesting that Higgs inflation models are still of interest
theoretically.

Nature of the universe, and its possible fates

Diagram showing the Higgs boson and top quark masses, which could indicate whether
our universe is stable, or a long-lived 'bubble'. As of 2012, the 2 σ ellipse based
on Tevatron and LHC data still allows for both possibilities.[41]
In the Standard Model, there exists the possibility that the underlying state of
our universe – known as the "vacuum" – is long-lived, but not completely stable. In
this scenario, the universe as we know it could effectively be destroyed by
collapsing into a more stable vacuum state.[42][43][44][45][46] This was sometimes
misreported as the Higgs boson "ending" the universe.[j] If the masses of the Higgs
boson and top quark are known more precisely, and the Standard Model provides an
accurate description of particle physics up to extreme energies of the Planck
scale, then it is possible to calculate whether the vacuum is stable or merely
long-lived.[49][50][51] A Higgs mass of 125–127 GeV/c2 seems to be extremely close
to the boundary for stability, but a definitive answer requires much more precise
measurements of the pole mass of the top quark.[41] New physics can change this
picture.[52]
If measurements of the Higgs boson suggest that our universe lies within a false
vacuum of this kind, then it would imply – more than likely in many billions of
years[53][k] – that the universe's forces, particles, and structures could cease to
exist as we know them (and be replaced by different ones), if a true vacuum
happened to nucleate.[53][l] It also suggests that the Higgs self-coupling λ and
its βλ function could be very close to zero at the Planck scale, with "intriguing"
implications, including theories of gravity and Higgs-based inflation.[41]: 218 
[55]
[56] A future electron–positron collider would be able to provide the precise
measurements of the top quark needed for such calculations.[41]

Vacuum energy and the cosmological constant

Further information: Zero-point energy and Vacuum state
More speculatively, the Higgs field has also been proposed as the energy of the
vacuum, which at the extreme energies of the first moments of the Big Bang caused
the universe to be a kind of featureless symmetry of undifferentiated, extremely
high energy. In this kind of speculation, the single unified field of a Grand
Unified Theory is identified as (or modelled upon) the Higgs field, and it is
through successive symmetry breakings of the Higgs field, or some similar field, at
phase transitions that the presently known forces and fields of the universe arise.
[57]

The relationship (if any) between the Higgs field and the presently observed vacuum
energy density of the universe has also come under scientific study. As observed,
the present vacuum energy density is extremely close to zero, but the energy
densities predicted from the Higgs field, supersymmetry, and other current theories
are typically many orders of magnitude larger. It is unclear how these should be
reconciled. This cosmological constant problem remains a major unanswered problem
in physics.

History
Theorisation
See also: 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers, Higgs mechanism, and History of
quantum field theory
AIP-Sakurai-best.JPG Higgs, Peter (1929) cropped.jpg
The six authors of the 1964 PRL papers, who received the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize
for their work; from left to right: Kibble, Guralnik, Hagen, Englert, Brout; right
image: Higgs.

Particle physicists study matter made from fundamental particles whose interactions
are mediated by exchange particles – gauge bosons – acting as force carriers. At
the beginning of the 1960s a number of these particles had been discovered or
proposed, along with theories suggesting how they relate to each other, some of
which had already been reformulated as field theories in which the objects of study
are not particles and forces, but quantum fields and their symmetries.[58]: 150 
However, attempts to produce quantum field models for two of the four known
fundamental forces – the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force – and
then to unify these interactions, were still unsuccessful.

One known problem was that gauge invariant approaches, including non-abelian models
such as Yang–Mills theory (1954), which held great promise for unified theories,
also seemed to predict known massive particles as massless.[21] Goldstone's
theorem, relating to continuous symmetries within some theories, also appeared to
rule out many obvious solutions,[59] since it appeared to show that zero-mass
particles known as Goldstone bosons would also have to exist that simply were "not
seen".[60] According to Guralnik, physicists had "no understanding" how these
problems could be overcome.[60]

Nobel Prize Laureate Peter Higgs in Stockholm, December 2013

Particle physicist and mathematician Peter Woit summarised the state of research at
the time:
Yang and Mills work on non-abelian gauge theory had one huge problem: in
perturbation theory it has massless particles which don't correspond to anything we
see. One way of getting rid of this problem is now fairly well understood, the
phenomenon of confinement realized in QCD, where the strong interactions get rid of
the massless "gluon" states at long distances. By the very early sixties, people
had begun to understand another source of massless particles: spontaneous symmetry
breaking of a continuous symmetry. What Philip Anderson realized and worked out in
the summer of 1962 was that, when you have both gauge symmetry and spontaneous
symmetry breaking, the massless Nambu–Goldstone mode [which give rise to Goldstone
bosons] can combine with the massless gauge field modes [which give rise to
massless gauge bosons] to produce a physical massive vector field [gauge bosons
with mass]. This is what happens in superconductivity, a subject about which
Anderson was (and is) one of the leading experts.[21] [text condensed]

The Higgs mechanism is a process by which vector bosons can acquire rest mass
without explicitly breaking gauge invariance, as a byproduct of spontaneous
symmetry breaking.[61][62] Initially, the mathematical theory behind spontaneous
symmetry breaking was conceived and published within particle physics by Yoichiro
Nambu in 1960[63] (and somewhat anticipated by Ernst Stueckelberg in 1938[64]), and
the concept that such a mechanism could offer a possible solution for the "mass
problem" was originally suggested in 1962 by Philip Anderson, who had previously
written papers on broken symmetry and its outcomes in superconductivity.[65]
Anderson concluded in his 1963 paper on the Yang–Mills theory, that "considering
the superconducting analog... [t]hese two types of bosons seem capable of canceling
each other out... leaving finite mass bosons"),[66][67] and in March 1964, Abraham
Klein and Benjamin Lee showed that Goldstone's theorem could be avoided this way in
at least some non-relativistic cases, and speculated it might be possible in truly
relativistic cases.[68]

These approaches were quickly developed into a full relativistic model,

independently and almost simultaneously, by three groups of physicists: by François
Englert and Robert Brout in August 1964;[69] by Peter Higgs in October 1964;[70]
and by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen, and Tom Kibble (GHK) in November 1964.[71]
Higgs also wrote a short, but important,[61] response published in September 1964
to an objection by Gilbert,[72] which showed that if calculating within the
radiation gauge, Goldstone's theorem and Gilbert's objection would become
inapplicable.[m] Higgs later described Gilbert's objection as prompting his own
paper.[73] Properties of the model were further considered by Guralnik in 1965,[74]
by Higgs in 1966,[75] by Kibble in 1967,[76] and further by GHK in 1967.[77] The
original three 1964 papers demonstrated that when a gauge theory is combined with
an additional charged scalar field that spontaneously breaks the symmetry, the
gauge bosons may consistently acquire a finite mass.[61][62][78] In 1967, Steven
Weinberg[79] and Abdus Salam[80] independently showed how a Higgs mechanism could
be used to break the electroweak symmetry of Sheldon Glashow's unified model for
the weak and electromagnetic interactions,[81] (itself an extension of work by
Schwinger), forming what became the Standard Model of particle physics. Weinberg
was the first to observe that this would also provide mass terms for the fermions.
[82][n]

At first, these seminal papers on spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetries were

largely ignored, because it was widely believed that the (non-Abelian gauge)
theories in question were a dead-end, and in particular that they could not be
renormalised. In 1971–72, Martinus Veltman and Gerard 't Hooft proved
renormalisation of Yang–Mills was possible in two papers covering massless, and
then massive, fields.[82] Their contribution, and the work of others on the
renormalisation group – including "substantial" theoretical work by Russian
physicists Ludvig Faddeev, Andrei Slavnov, Efim Fradkin, and Igor Tyutin[83] – was
eventually "enormously profound and influential",[84] but even with all key
elements of the eventual theory published there was still almost no wider interest.
For example, Coleman found in a study that "essentially no-one paid any attention"
to Weinberg's paper prior to 1971[85] and discussed by David Politzer in his 2004
Nobel speech.[84] – now the most cited in particle physics[86] – and even in 1970
according to Politzer, Glashow's teaching of the weak interaction contained no
mention of Weinberg's, Salam's, or Glashow's own work.[84] In practice, Politzer
states, almost everyone learned of the theory due to physicist Benjamin Lee, who
combined the work of Veltman and 't Hooft with insights by others, and popularised
the completed theory.[84] In this way, from 1971, interest and acceptance
"exploded"[84] and the ideas were quickly absorbed in the mainstream.[82][84]

The resulting electroweak theory and Standard Model have accurately predicted
(among other things) weak neutral currents, three bosons, the top and charm quarks,
and with great precision, the mass and other properties of some of these.[e] Many
of those involved eventually won Nobel Prizes or other renowned awards. A 1974
paper and comprehensive review in Reviews of Modern Physics commented that "while
no one doubted the [mathematical] correctness of these arguments, no one quite
believed that nature was diabolically clever enough to take advantage of them",[87]
adding that the theory had so far produced accurate answers that accorded with
experiment, but it was unknown whether the theory was fundamentally correct.[88] By
1986 and again in the 1990s it became possible to write that understanding and
proving the Higgs sector of the Standard Model was "the central problem today in
particle physics".[23][24]

Summary and impact of the PRL papers

Wikinews has news related to:

2010 Sakurai Prize awarded for 1964 Higgs Boson theory work
Prospective Nobel Prize for Higgs boson work disputed
The three papers written in 1964 were each recognised as milestone papers during
Physical Review Letters's 50th anniversary celebration.[78] Their six authors were
also awarded the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for this
work.[89] (A controversy also arose the same year, because in the event of a Nobel
Prize only up to three scientists could be recognised, with six being credited for
the papers.[90]) Two of the three PRL papers (by Higgs and by GHK) contained
equations for the hypothetical field that eventually would become known as the
Higgs field and its hypothetical quantum, the Higgs boson.[70][71] Higgs'
subsequent 1966 paper showed the decay mechanism of the boson; only a massive boson
can decay and the decays can prove the mechanism.[citation needed]

In the paper by Higgs the boson is massive, and in a closing sentence Higgs writes
that "an essential feature" of the theory "is the prediction of incomplete
multiplets of scalar and vector bosons".[70] (Frank Close comments that 1960s gauge
theorists were focused on the problem of massless vector bosons, and the implied
existence of a massive scalar boson was not seen as important; only Higgs directly
addressed it.[91]: 
154, 
166, 
175 
) In the paper by GHK the boson is massless and
decoupled from the massive states.[71] In reviews dated 2009 and 2011, Guralnik
states that in the GHK model the boson is massless only in a lowest-order
approximation, but it is not subject to any constraint and acquires mass at higher
orders, and adds that the GHK paper was the only one to show that there are no
massless Goldstone bosons in the model and to give a complete analysis of the
general Higgs mechanism.[60][92] All three reached similar conclusions, despite
their very different approaches: Higgs' paper essentially used classical
techniques, Englert and Brout's involved calculating vacuum polarisation in
perturbation theory around an assumed symmetry-breaking vacuum state, and GHK used
operator formalism and conservation laws to explore in depth the ways in which
Goldstone's theorem may be worked around.[61] Some versions of the theory predicted
more than one kind of Higgs fields and bosons, and alternative "Higgsless" models
were considered until the discovery of the Higgs boson.

Experimental search
Main article: Search for the Higgs boson
To produce Higgs bosons, two beams of particles are accelerated to very high
energies and allowed to collide within a particle detector. Occasionally, although
rarely, a Higgs boson will be created fleetingly as part of the collision
byproducts. Because the Higgs boson decays very quickly, particle detectors cannot
detect it directly. Instead the detectors register all the decay products (the
decay signature) and from the data the decay process is reconstructed. If the
observed decay products match a possible decay process (known as a decay channel)
of a Higgs boson, this indicates that a Higgs boson may have been created. In
practice, many processes may produce similar decay signatures. Fortunately, the
Standard Model precisely predicts the likelihood of each of these, and each known
process, occurring. So, if the detector detects more decay signatures consistently
matching a Higgs boson than would otherwise be expected if Higgs bosons did not
exist, then this would be strong evidence that the Higgs boson exists.

Because Higgs boson production in a particle collision is likely to be very rare (1

in 10 billion at the LHC),[o] and many other possible collision events can have
similar decay signatures, the data of hundreds of trillions of collisions needs to
be analysed and must "show the same picture" before a conclusion about the
existence of the Higgs boson can be reached. To conclude that a new particle has
been found, particle physicists require that the statistical analysis of two
independent particle detectors each indicate that there is lesser than a one-in-a-
million chance that the observed decay signatures are due to just background random
Standard Model events – i.e., that the observed number of events is more than five
standard deviations (sigma) different from that expected if there was no new
particle. More collision data allows better confirmation of the physical properties
of any new particle observed, and allows physicists to decide whether it is indeed
a Higgs boson as described by the Standard Model or some other hypothetical new
particle.

To find the Higgs boson, a powerful particle accelerator was needed, because Higgs
bosons might not be seen in lower-energy experiments. The collider needed to have a
high luminosity in order to ensure enough collisions were seen for conclusions to
be drawn. Finally, advanced computing facilities were needed to process the vast
amount of data (25 petabytes per year as of 2012) produced by the collisions.[95]
For the announcement of 4 July 2012, a new collider known as the Large Hadron
Collider was constructed at CERN with a planned eventual collision energy of 14 TeV
– over seven times any previous collider – and over 300 trillion (3×10+14) LHC
proton–proton collisions were analysed by the LHC Computing Grid, the world's
largest computing grid (as of 2012), comprising over 170 computing facilities in a
worldwide network across 36 countries.[95][96][97]

Search before 4 July 2012

The first extensive search for the Higgs boson was conducted at the Large Electron–
Positron Collider (LEP) at CERN in the 1990s. At the end of its service in 2000,
LEP had found no conclusive evidence for the Higgs.[p] This implied that if the
Higgs boson were to exist it would have to be heavier than 114.4 GeV/c2.[98]

The search continued at Fermilab in the United States, where the Tevatron – the
collider that discovered the top quark in 1995 – had been upgraded for this
purpose. There was no guarantee that the Tevatron would be able to find the Higgs,
but it was the only supercollider that was operational since the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) was still under construction and the planned Superconducting Super
Collider had been cancelled in 1993 and never completed. The Tevatron was only able
to exclude further ranges for the Higgs mass, and was shut down on 30 September
2011 because it no longer could keep up with the LHC. The final analysis of the
data excluded the possibility of a Higgs boson with a mass between 147 GeV/c2 and
180 GeV/c2. In addition, there was a small (but not significant) excess of events
possibly indicating a Higgs boson with a mass between 115 GeV/c2 and 140 GeV/c2.
[99]

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, was designed specifically to be

able to either confirm or exclude the existence of the Higgs boson. Built in a 27
km tunnel under the ground near Geneva originally inhabited by LEP, it was designed
to collide two beams of protons, initially at energies of 3.5 TeV per beam (7 TeV
total), or almost 3.6 times that of the Tevatron, and upgradeable to 2 × 7 TeV (14
TeV total) in future. Theory suggested if the Higgs boson existed, collisions at
these energy levels should be able to reveal it. As one of the most complicated
scientific instruments ever built, its operational readiness was delayed for 14
months by a magnet quench event nine days after its inaugural tests, caused by a
faulty electrical connection that damaged over 50 superconducting magnets and
contaminated the vacuum system.[100][101][102]

Data collection at the LHC finally commenced in March 2010.[103] By December 2011
the two main particle detectors at the LHC, ATLAS and CMS, had narrowed down the
mass range where the Higgs could exist to around 116–130 GeV/c2 (ATLAS) and 115–127
GeV/c2 (CMS).[104][105] There had also already been a number of promising event
excesses that had "evaporated" and proven to be nothing but random fluctuations.
However, from around May 2011,[106] both experiments had seen among their results,
the slow emergence of a small yet consistent excess of gamma and 4-lepton decay
signatures and several other particle decays, all hinting at a new particle at a
mass around 125 GeV/c2.[106] By around November 2011, the anomalous data at 125
GeV/c2 was becoming "too large to ignore" (although still far from conclusive), and
the team leaders at both ATLAS and CMS each privately suspected they might have
found the Higgs.[106] On 28 November 2011, at an internal meeting of the two team
leaders and the director general of CERN, the latest analyses were discussed
outside their teams for the first time, suggesting both ATLAS and CMS might be
converging on a possible shared result at 125 GeV/c2, and initial preparations
commenced in case of a successful finding.[106] While this information was not
known publicly at the time, the narrowing of the possible Higgs range to around
115–130 GeV/2 and the repeated observation of small but consistent event excesses
across multiple channels at both ATLAS and CMS in the 124–126 GeV/c2 region
(described as "tantalising hints" of around 2–3 sigma) were public knowledge with
"a lot of interest".[107] It was t