Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 11:22:22 +0100 From: Roberto TENCHINI Organization: CERN To: letters@newscientist.com CC: Neil.Calder@cern.ch, Tiziano Camporesi , Maria.Kienzle@cern.ch, Peter Igo-Kemenes , David Plane , Martin Gruenewald , Roberto.Tenchini@cern.ch Subject: from the LEP experiments (Letter published in New Scientist issue of 22 December 2001) Geneva, December, the 9th, 2001 Dear Sir, We read with astonishment, in your article of December the 5th, 2001, that results from the LEP experiments indicated that the Higgs boson did not exist. As Chairpersons of the LEP Higgs and Electroweak working groups and Spokespersons of the LEP Collaborations, we would like to inform you that there is no such claim from LEP experimental groups. Although the search for the Higgs boson is an important and fascinating topic, it nonetheless forms only a small part of the research programme at LEP. After many years of detailed analyses of LEP data, our knowledge of the fundamental constituents and interactions of nature has improved tremendously. The Standard Model is the theory that summarizes best our current understanding. The remarkable conclusion from a wide variety of measurements is that the Standard Model essentially describes them all, and there is no compelling need for introducing new phenomena beyond those foreseen by the Standard Model. Based on the above precise measurements, the theory makes predictions for the mass of the Higgs boson. In fact it tells us that the mass is probably lower than 200 GeV. On the other hand, from the results of our direct searches for the Higgs boson we conclude that the mass is larger than 114 GeV, which is perfectly compatible with the above prediction - hence our dismay concerning the report that we have ruled out the existence of the Higgs boson. In addition, we have hints in the data, which are compatible with the production of a Higgs boson of about 115 GeV mass. Thus, all our data are consistent and compatible with the existence of the Higgs boson, which remains one of the key issues for our understanding of particle physics. This was the conclusion one year ago, and still is after more refined treatment of the data. Yours sincerely, Martin Gruenewald, Chairman of the LEP Electroweak Working Group Peter Igo-Kemenes, Chairman of the LEP Higgs Working Group Roberto Tenchini, Spokesman of the ALEPH Collaboration Tiziano Camporesi, Spokesman of the DELPHI Collaboration Maria Kienzle, Chairperson of the L3 Collaboration David Plane, Spokesman of the OPAL Collaboration