Video Library

The recent discovery
of the Higgs boson is a fundamental advance in particle physics. This talk
gives a theorist's perspective of the significance of this discovery. The Higgs
boson was proposed in the 1960s, but it is best understood in the context of
the quest to understand the weak interactions, which began with Fermi's theory
of weak interactions almost 80 years ago. This has led to three very different
paradigms for the structure of fundamental interactions at the TeV scale:

Crudely formulated, the idea of neorealism, in the way that
Chris Isham and Andreas Doering use it, means that each theory of
physics, in its mathematical formulation should share certain structural
properties of classical physics. These properties are chosen to allow some degree of
realism in the interpretation (for example, physical variables always have values).
Apart from restricting the form of physical theories, neorealism does
increase freedom in the shape of physical theories in another

The Standard Model Higgs boson may be mixed
with another scalar that does not couple singly to gauge bosons or fermions.
The electroweak quantum numbers of such an additional scalar can be determined
by measuring the quartic Higgs-Higgs-vector-vector couplings, which
contribute—along with the coveted triple Higgs coupling—to double Higgs
production in e+e− collisions. We show that simultaneous sensitivity
to the quartic Higgs-Higgs-vector-vector coupling and the triple Higgs coupling