In July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced the observation of a Higgs boson at a mass of around 125 gigaelectronvolts. Ten years later, and with the ...data corresponding to the production of a 30-times larger number of Higgs bosons, we have learnt much more about the properties of the Higgs boson. The CMS experiment has observed the Higgs boson in numerous fermionic and bosonic decay channels, established its spin-parity quantum numbers, determined its mass and measured its production cross-sections in various modes. Here the CMS Collaboration reports the most up-to-date combination of results on the properties of the Higgs boson, including the most stringent limit on the cross-section for the production of a pair of Higgs bosons, on the basis of data from proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 teraelectronvolts. Within the uncertainties, all these observations are compatible with the predictions of the standard model of elementary particle physics. Much evidence points to the fact that the standard model is a low-energy approximation of a more comprehensive theory. Several of the standard model issues originate in the sector of Higgs boson physics. An order of magnitude larger number of Higgs bosons, expected to be examined over the next 15 years, will help deepen our understanding of this crucial sector.
New sets of CMS underlying-event parameters (“tunes”) are presented for the
pythia
8 event generator. These tunes use the NNPDF3.1 parton distribution functions (PDFs) at leading (LO), ...next-to-leading (NLO), or next-to-next-to-leading (NNLO) orders in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, and the strong coupling evolution at LO or NLO. Measurements of charged-particle multiplicity and transverse momentum densities at various hadron collision energies are fit simultaneously to determine the parameters of the tunes. Comparisons of the predictions of the new tunes are provided for observables sensitive to the event shapes at LEP, global underlying event, soft multiparton interactions, and double-parton scattering contributions. In addition, comparisons are made for observables measured in various specific processes, such as multijet, Drell–Yan, and top quark-antiquark pair production including jet substructure observables. The simulation of the underlying event provided by the new tunes is interfaced to a higher-order matrix-element calculation. For the first time, predictions from
pythia
8 obtained with tunes based on NLO or NNLO PDFs are shown to reliably describe minimum-bias and underlying-event data with a similar level of agreement to predictions from tunes using LO PDF sets.
The observation of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson decay to a pair of bottom quarks is presented. The main contribution to this result is from processes in which Higgs bosons are produced in ...association with a W or Z boson (VH), and are searched for in final states including 0, 1, or 2 charged leptons and two identified bottom quark jets. The results from the measurement of these processes in a data sample recorded by the CMS experiment in 2017, comprising 41.3 fb^{-1} of proton-proton collisions at sqrts=13 TeV, are described. When combined with previous VH measurements using data collected at sqrts=7, 8, and 13 TeV, an excess of events is observed at m_{H}=125 GeV with a significance of 4.8 standard deviations, where the expectation for the SM Higgs boson is 4.9. The corresponding measured signal strength is 1.01±0.22. The combination of this result with searches by the CMS experiment for H→bbover ¯ in other production processes yields an observed (expected) significance of 5.6 (5.5) standard deviations and a signal strength of 1.04±0.20.
Phantom limb syndrome (PLS) comprises various disturbances, including pain in the missing limb and phantom sensations. This study is about the successful treatment of a PLS patient by prolonged ...infusion of local anesthetic through a perineural catheter. A 45-year-old man came to the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute (Bologna, Italy) complaining of a painful right leg after trauma. Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) type II was diagnosed. Therapy with tricyclics, gabapentin, and spinal infusion of morphine was started. After 4 years of treatment, infection led to the need for right below-the-knee amputation. After amputation, PLS appeared immediately and was not responsive to pharmacological treatment. At day II, a perineural sciatic catheter was positioned and 0.5% ropivacaine infusion with an elastomeric pump at 5 mL/h was started. The infusion was temporarily discontinued every week to evaluate the PLS. After 7 days, a 30% reduction in pain was observed, increased to 60% after 14 days, and disappeared completely after 21 days, leaving only the phantom limb sensations. After 28 days of continuous infusion, the phantom limb sensations had also disappeared. The perineural catheter was removed after 48 hours without perineural infusion. The patient was weaned from morphine over 150 days. Follow-ups at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months confirmed that the PLS did not reappear. The results are limited to one patient but are encouraging, particularly due to the relevance of the pathology and the poor results of conventional treatments. More cases are obviously needed to support the efficacy of this therapy.
Evidence for the light-by-light scattering process, γγ→γγ, in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions at a centre-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of 5.02TeV is reported. The analysis is conducted using a ...data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 390μb−1 recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Light-by-light scattering processes are selected in events with two photons exclusively produced, each with transverse energy ETγ>2GeV, pseudorapidity |ηγ|<2.4, diphoton invariant mass mγγ>5GeV, diphoton transverse momentum pTγγ<1GeV, and diphoton acoplanarity below 0.01. After all selection criteria are applied, 14 events are observed, compared to expectations of 9.0±0.9(theo) events for the signal and 4.0±1.2(stat) for the background processes. The excess observed in data relative to the background-only expectation corresponds to a significance of 3.7 standard deviations, and has properties consistent with those expected for the light-by-light scattering signal. The measured fiducial light-by-light scattering cross section, σfid(γγ→γγ)=120±46(stat)±28(syst)±12(theo)nb, is consistent with the standard model prediction. The mγγ distribution is used to set new exclusion limits on the production of pseudoscalar axion-like particles, via the ▪ process, in the mass range ▪.
A measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson in the diphoton decay channel is presented. This analysis is based on 35.9fb−1 of proton-proton collision data collected during the 2016 LHC running ...period, with the CMS detector at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. A refined detector calibration and new analysis techniques have been used to improve the precision of this measurement. The Higgs boson mass is measured to be mH=125.78±0.26GeV. This is combined with a measurement of mH already performed in the H→ZZ→4ℓ decay channel using the same data set, giving mH=125.46±0.16GeV. This result, when further combined with an earlier measurement of mH using data collected in 2011 and 2012 with the CMS detector, gives a value for the Higgs boson mass of mH=125.38±0.14GeV. This is currently the most precise measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson.
A measurement of the H→ττ signal strength is performed using events recorded in proton–proton collisions by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2016 at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV. The data set ...corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 35.9fb−1. The H→ττ signal is established with a significance of 4.9 standard deviations, to be compared to an expected significance of 4.7 standard deviations. The best fit of the product of the observed H→ττ signal production cross section and branching fraction is 1.09−0.26+0.27 times the standard model expectation. The combination with the corresponding measurement performed with data collected by the CMS experiment at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8TeV leads to an observed significance of 5.9 standard deviations, equal to the expected significance. This is the first observation of Higgs boson decays to τ leptons by a single experiment.
The results of two searches for pair production of vectorlike T or B quarks in fully hadronic final states are presented, using data from the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The ...data were collected at the LHC during 2016 and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. A cut-based analysis specifically targets the bW decay mode of the T quark and allows for the reconstruction of the T quark candidates. In a second analysis, a multiclassification algorithm, the "boosted event shape tagger," is deployed to label candidate jets as originating from top quarks, and W, Z, and H. Candidate events are categorized according to the multiplicities of identified jets, and the scalar sum of all observed jet momenta is used to discriminate signal events from the quantum chromodynamics multijet background. Both analyses probe all possible branching fraction combinations of the T and B quarks and set limits at 95% confidence level on their masses, ranging from 740 to 1370 GeV. These results represent a significant improvement relative to existing searches in the fully hadronic final state.
A search is presented for new physics in events with two low-momentum, oppositely charged leptons (electrons or muons) and missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass ...energy of 13 TeV. The data collected using the CMS detector at the LHC correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35.9fb−1. The observed event yields are consistent with the expectations from the standard model. The results are interpreted in terms of pair production of charginos and neutralinos (χ˜1± and χ˜20) with nearly degenerate masses, as expected in natural supersymmetry models with light higgsinos, as well as in terms of the pair production of top squarks (t˜ ), when the lightest neutralino and the top squark have similar masses. At 95% confidence level, wino-like χ˜1±/χ˜20 masses are excluded up to 230 GeV for a mass difference of 20 GeV relative to the lightest neutralino. In the higgsino-like model, masses are excluded up to 168 GeV for the same mass difference. For t˜ pair production, top squark masses up to 450 GeV are excluded for a mass difference of 40 GeV relative to the lightest neutralino.