AI boosts sensitivity to double-Higgs signatures occurring about once per trillion collisions
Is the universe as stable as we think it is? That's one of the big questions that particle physicists worldwide are preparing to answer with the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC—the world's most powerful particle accelerator—when its upgrade is completed in about four years. In the meantime, researchers, including a cohort at the University of Michigan, are working to sharpen their analytical tools…
Researchers at the University of Michigan have achieved unprecedented sensitivity in detecting specific interactions of the Higgs boson within data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The team, led by Tom Schwarz and including Greg Myers and Tamas Baer, employed an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm to spot signatures of the elusive Higgs boson interacting with itself.
This analysis is the most sensitive in the world to this particular physics, being about 60 times more sensitive than earlier results and showing a 65% improvement over its immediate predecessor. The LHC, operated by CERN, is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. The Higgs boson, predicted decades ago and discovered in 2012, plays a crucial role in explaining how subatomic particles acquire mass.
Understanding how the Higgs boson interacts with itself is a critical question in particle physics, with potential implications for both the Standard Model of Particle Physics and the stability of the universe. The team analyzed data from the LHC's Run 2 (2015-2018) and the first two years of Run 3 (2022-2024), generating roughly 30 million collisions per second.
Their AI-based approach allowed them to identify potential double-Higgs events, which occur approximately once every trillion collisions, out of the vast amount of background data.
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