Reading the Scientific American article (see link) there is suggestion that ATLAS observed not just one Higgs boson but two of them with a ~3 GeV mass difference. The lighter decays to ZZ while the heavier to 2 x photon. My first thought is that it is just a statistical fluctuation and that there is actually only one observed Higgs boson. Any thoughts? Could there really be two of them?
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/12/14/have-scientists-found-two-different-higgs-bosons/?goback=.gmr_3091009.gde_3091009_member_198478573
The discovery of long waited Higgs Boson was incredible as it completes the Standard Model, but that doesn't answers each and every question. Higgs Boson is special because it is said to gives mass to particles as the particles gain mass by interacting with Higgs Field and it is Higgs field that makes this boson very special but it doesn't tells how force of gravity fits into this picture or why some particles have more and some have less mass.
I won't say they didn't discover two different Higgs Bosons(126.6GeV and 123.5GeV) but i would say they might have discovered two different. Statistical fluctuation can not be that enough giving the difference of almost 3GeV. Earlier this year, OPERA also confirmed the story of neutrinos which gave a very slight increase to the their velocity compared to light, so if there is any fluctuation in their calculations, that might be extracted soon. Its is just the limit of our understanding but we still have a lot more to know. I hope that SUSY particles, quark-gluon plasma, gravitino may be discovered soon.
P.S. I am an undergraduate student and not very expert in Physics, but i like to discuss with experts and get new ideas from them.
The effect is at the level of 3 sigma, and we never claim a discovery based on a 3 sigma effect. No systematic effect has been found that can account for the 3 GeV difference. So, it remains an open question until the statistical precision is improved, and/or CMS shows what they observe.
To complete Torsten'answer : please do not forget that the number of candidates is small especially in the higgs decay to 4 leptons and reconstructed over a standard model background which can make the invariant mass distribution fluctuate significantly. With our present luminosity the chance to observe what we see (or a higher fluctuation) is sizeable (of the order of a %) and forbids to draw any strong conclusion. We really need extra data that will not come before 2014 at the earliest. La patience est mère de toutes les vertus.
Thanks for the interesting experimental perspective, we certainly need to wait for more data before a conclusion can be made. I'd also be interested to hear the theoretical perspective. What kind of theory could provide such Higgs bosons? Of course they need not be Higgs bosons.
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