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The Higgs boson implications and prospects for future discoveries

Nature Reviews Physics volume 3, pages 608–624 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Higgs boson, a fundamental scalar boson with mass 125 GeV, was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in 2012. So far, experiments at the LHC have focused on testing the Higgs boson’s couplings to other elementary particles, precision measurements of the Higgs boson’s properties and an initial investigation of the Higgs boson’s self-interaction and shape of the Higgs potential. The Higgs boson mass of 125 GeV is a remarkable value, meaning that the underlying state of the Universe, the vacuum, sits very close to the border between stable and metastable, which may hint at deeper physics beyond the standard model. The Higgs potential also influences ideas about the cosmological constant, the dark energy that drives the accelerating expansion of the Universe, the mysterious dark matter that comprises about 80% of the matter component in the Universe and a possible phase transition in the early Universe that might be responsible for baryogenesis. A detailed study of the Higgs boson is at the centre of the European Strategy for Particle Physics update. Here we review the current understanding of the Higgs boson and discuss the insights expected from present and future experiments.

Key points

  • The discovery of the Higgs boson was a major milestone in particle physics, confirming the standard model.

  • Direct tests of the couplings of the Higgs boson to fermions confirmed the mechanism that gives mass to the W and Z bosons, thus making the electroweak interaction short range. A recent highlight is the direct observation of the Higgs boson coupling to muons.

  • The observed properties of the Higgs boson put the standard model vacuum intriguingly close to the border between stable and metastable. Further connections to the open questions pertaining to baryogenesis, the nature of dark matter and dark energy and cosmic inflation mean that the Higgs boson is central to our understanding of the Universe.

  • Precision measurements of the Higgs boson to further probe its interactions and possible deeper origin and structure are an essential part of the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider programme and were recently identified by the European Strategy for Particle Physics to be the highest priority for the next high-energy collider facility.

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Fig. 1: The Higgs potential and its sensitivity to quantum corrections.
Fig. 2: Top quark production in Higgs boson decays.
Fig. 3: Bottom quark production in Higgs boson decays.
Fig. 4: Muon production in Higgs boson decays.
Fig. 5: Summary of measured Higgs boson properties.
Fig. 6: Comparison of the upper limits at 90% CL from direct detection experiments209,210,211,212,213 on the spin-independent weak interacting massive particle (WIMP)-nucleon scattering cross-section σWIMP−N with the observed exclusion limits, assuming Higgs portal scenarios where the 125 GeV Higgs boson decays to a pair of dark matter particles106 with the Higgs boson as the unique link between SM and dark matter particles.
Fig. 7: Vacuum stability and ultraviolet behaviour of the SM.
Fig. 8: 1σ precision reach at the Future Circular Collider (FCC) on the effective Higgs boson couplings to fermions (muons, tau particles, charm quarks, top quarks and b quarks), to vector bosons (W or Z, photons, Zγ and gluons) and the Higgs boson self-coupling in an effective field theory framework.

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Acknowledgements

None of the results presented in this review would have been possible without the diligent efforts of all the colleagues from the LHC accelerator group, the ATLAS and CMS experiments, the computing divisions, the theoretical community and many more, who all took part in this fantastic adventure at the energy frontier. Specifically, the authors thank M. Cepeda, F. Jegerlehner and J. Krzysiak for useful discussions during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kitzbühel Centre for Physics, Kitzbühel, Austria

    Steven D. Bass

  2. Jagiellonian University, Marian Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Kraków, Poland

    Steven D. Bass

  3. CERN, Experimental Physics Department, Geneva, Switzerland

    Albert De Roeck

  4. University of Antwerp, Physics Department, Antwerp, Belgium

    Albert De Roeck

  5. INFN Sezione di Roma and Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Marumi Kado

  6. IJCLab, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS/IN2P3, Orsay, France

    Marumi Kado

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Glossary

Vacuum expectation value

The matrix element of a field or operator in the vacuum.

Higgs condensate

The Bose−Einstein condensate of Higgs bosons, which forms in the vacuum.

Naturalness

The theoretical idea that dimensionless ratios of mass scales in a physical theory should be of order one. That is, without fine tuning, a mass parameter can only be much smaller than the others if setting it zero increases the symmetry of the theory.

Gauge freedom

With gauge symmetry, we are free to choose the gauge symmetry parameters to make the physics look simplest, with all choices of gauge parameters being physically equivalent and degenerate.

Radiative corrections

Quantum fluctuations in the intermediate state of the particle interactions.

Barn

A unit that quantifies the integrated luminosity. It has the dimension of inverse area, proportional to the amount of proton−proton collisions produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). One femtobarn 1 fb = 10−43 m2.One inverse attobarn 1 ab−1 = 103 fb−1. One inverse femtobarn corresponds to approximately 1014 proton−proton collisions in the LHC.

Signal strength

The ratio of the signal rate divided by the predicted rate for a standard model (SM) Higgs boson at a given mass, denoted by the symbol μS. The closer μS is to one, the more it resembles a SM Higgs boson.

Diphoton channel

(Higgs) particle production with two photons in the final state.

Tree-level interference

A cross term in squaring the amplitude for Higgs boson production, where the Higgs particle is liberated either from a W boson or from a top quark. This is specified to distinguish the loop level interference that occurs in the diphoton decay channel.

Decay channel

A collision final state involving a specific decay mode of the Higgs boson (for example, two photons, four leptons, two vector bosons, two fermions and so on).

Production channel

A collision final state involving a specific production mode of the Higgs boson (for example, gluon fusion, vector boson fusion, associated production with a vector boson, a pair of top quarks and so on).

Drell−Yan di-muon

A process in which a quark from one incoming proton annihilates with an antiquark from the second proton, producing a photon or Z boson that then decays into a μ+μ− pair.

Mass shell

Physical particles with the correct energy−momentum relation are called on-shell or on-mass shell; otherwise, they are called off-shell or off-mass shell. Off-shell particles are virtual and can exist in interaction processes.

Trilinear coupling

The interaction vertex involving three Higgs particles (and no others).

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Bass, S.D., De Roeck, A. & Kado, M. The Higgs boson implications and prospects for future discoveries. Nat Rev Phys 3, 608–624 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-021-00341-2

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