Computational Particle Physics: Is the HIggs Boson a Technicolor Meson?
Chris Schroeder
Physics Department, UCSD
Abstract:
Detecting the Higgs boson is one of the highest priorities of the current generation of particle physicists. While the Higgs may be a fundamental particle, the interesting possibility exists that it is instead composed of "quarks" of a new gauge theory at a higher energy scale, termed Technicolor. In fact, the Higgs is expected to be discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in the next two years, and if the particle's mass is on or above a certain, not unreasonable scale, then a form of Technicolor may become a prime candidate to explain its origin. I will describe this puzzle and numerical methods which we are utilizing to explore it.