🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5NOV199211015169@csa2.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE) writes:

> From an experimental point of view, the entire question of mass generation
> is only now becoming a tractable problem.  I am sure that Matt will flame
> me for lending so much credence to this, but I'll tell you anyway.  Ellis 
> et.al. have done fits to the large body of LEP data on Z physics, treating
> M(top) and M(Higgs) as two open parameters of the SM.  The fact that 
> radiative corrections set nice limits on M(top) is well known and widely
> accepted.  You find, roughly, that on the assumption that the SM is correct,
> M(top) = 130+/-30 GeV.  Ellis finds that you can also now constrain the Higgs
> mass, though very weakly.

I'll try not to make this too much of a flame... :-)

My complaint with an analysis like this is that the Higgs boson is
only one possibility for what's breaking the electroweak symmetry
(and, hence, what's generating fermion masses), and not necessarily
even all that plausible.  Personally, I don't like the idea of
elementary scalar particles---not without supersymmetry, anyway.

We're certainly seeing radiative corrections from *some* heavy
physics.  We have enough precision so that we distinguish between
models just a little bit (enough, for example, so that technicolor is
in serious trouble), but not enough, in my opinion, so that we can
really say that what we're seeing is a Higgs.  The most we can say is
that we haven't yet made any measurement that rules out the minimal
Standard Model with a single Higgs boson.

I take the top measurement more seriously.  This is a much bigger
effect, and it's also much less model-dependent.  We'll see, though,
when the top is found.  If we're lucky, that will be at the Tevatron,
in the next couple of years.
--
Matthew Austern                   Just keep yelling until you attract a
(510) 644-2618                    crowd, then a constituency, a movement, a
austern@lbl.bitnet                faction, an army!  If you don't have any
matt@physics.berkeley.edu         solutions, become a part of the problem!