Number 407 (Story #2), December 21, 1998 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
GLUON FUSION might be the shortcut to finding Higgs bosons. As the hypothetical particle which supposedly endows other particles with mass, the Higgs is an important ingredient in the standard model of particle interactions and one of the chief quarries at present and future accelerators. In fact, a new calculation shows that the Higgs might even be found at the rejuvenated Tevatron at Fermilab if the Higgs mass (still unknown) is less than 180 GeV. This prognosis counts on the ability of colliding protons and antiprotons to send forth gluons which then fuse to form a Higgs, which would thereafter decay into a pair of W bosons (carriers of the weak force). Previous studies pondering the likelihood for Higgs production were based chiefly on the notion that the proton-antiproton collisions would make a Higgs via quark- antiquark fusion in the company of a W, and had estimated that the Tevatron would be capable of spotting Higgs particles with masses no larger than about 130 GeV. At a recent meeting at Fermilab on Higgs prospects in the next round of work at the Tevatron, experimentalists were heartened by the new estimates since naturally they would like to explore as large a Higgs window as possible. (Tao Han and Ren-Jie Zhang, Physical Review Letters, 4 Jan 1999; than@pheno.physics.wisc.edu or 608-262-2865; Tao Han, Andre Turcot and Ren-Jie Zhang, http://xxx.lanl.gov/hep-th/9812275.)
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