Physics Colloquium

http://www.physics.upenn.edu/people/e.lipeles.html

"Observation of a Higgs Boson: What we found and what it means"

The ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have observed a new particle consistent with the standard model Higgs boson. This is the culmination of an almost 50 year search starting since its prediction in 1964. The Higgs particle plays a key role in the theory of electroweak interactions, and also gives mass to all the fermions in the standard model of particle physics. I will describe the original motivation for the Higgs boson hypothesis, the ATLAS experiment, and the evidence for the existence of a new particle. Finally, I'll address what remains to be confirmed and important outstanding questions raised by the discovery.