Measuring the width of the heaviest elementary particles at the LHC
by
Pedro Silva(LIP)
→
UTC
Description
We present the most recent measurements of the total decay width of
the heaviest elementary particles ever observed: the top quark and the
Higgs boson. Both measurements have been performed using
proton-proton data acquired by the CMS experiment at the LHC, during 2012.
The experimental techniques used to determine the
total width of these particles are described, similarities and
differences are summarized,
and an outlook to how these results can shed some light on new physics is given.
Both results considerably improve over previous experimental
constraints obtained in hadron collider experiments.
References: http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.2292 and
http://cds.cern.ch/record/1670066.
