Comment on “Accumulating evidence for the associate production of a neutral scalar with mass around 151 GeV”

Andrew Fowlie

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2022.136936

Comment on “Accumulating evidence for the associate production of a neutral scalar with mass around 151 GeV”

Andrew Fowlie

Nanjing Normal University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A recent paper [1] accumulates evidence for a new fundamental particle by combining several CMS and ATLAS searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. The putative particle is a neutral scalar, S, with a mass of about 151GeV. The reported significances are 5.1σ local and 4.8σ global. This nearly reaches the 5σ threshold for a discovery in high-energy physics. In this brief note we cast doubt on the strength of the evidence for a new particle. After taking into account the fact that signals were fitted to six different channels, we find that the significances are only 4.1σ local and 3.5σ global. The code and instructions for reproducing our calculations are available at this github repo.

Original language	English
Article number	136936
Journal	Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics
Volume	827
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2022.136936
Publication status	Published - 10 Apr 2022
Externally published	Yes

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10.1016/j.physletb.2022.136936

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title = "Comment on “Accumulating evidence for the associate production of a neutral scalar with mass around 151 GeV”",

abstract = "A recent paper [1] accumulates evidence for a new fundamental particle by combining several CMS and ATLAS searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. The putative particle is a neutral scalar, S, with a mass of about 151GeV. The reported significances are 5.1σ local and 4.8σ global. This nearly reaches the 5σ threshold for a discovery in high-energy physics. In this brief note we cast doubt on the strength of the evidence for a new particle. After taking into account the fact that signals were fitted to six different channels, we find that the significances are only 4.1σ local and 3.5σ global. The code and instructions for reproducing our calculations are available at this github repo.",

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AU - Fowlie, Andrew

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N2 - A recent paper [1] accumulates evidence for a new fundamental particle by combining several CMS and ATLAS searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. The putative particle is a neutral scalar, S, with a mass of about 151GeV. The reported significances are 5.1σ local and 4.8σ global. This nearly reaches the 5σ threshold for a discovery in high-energy physics. In this brief note we cast doubt on the strength of the evidence for a new particle. After taking into account the fact that signals were fitted to six different channels, we find that the significances are only 4.1σ local and 3.5σ global. The code and instructions for reproducing our calculations are available at this github repo.

AB - A recent paper [1] accumulates evidence for a new fundamental particle by combining several CMS and ATLAS searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. The putative particle is a neutral scalar, S, with a mass of about 151GeV. The reported significances are 5.1σ local and 4.8σ global. This nearly reaches the 5σ threshold for a discovery in high-energy physics. In this brief note we cast doubt on the strength of the evidence for a new particle. After taking into account the fact that signals were fitted to six different channels, we find that the significances are only 4.1σ local and 3.5σ global. The code and instructions for reproducing our calculations are available at this github repo.

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VL - 827

JO - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics

JF - Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics

M1 - 136936

ER -

Comment on “Accumulating evidence for the associate production of a neutral scalar with mass around 151 GeV”

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