Did the Higgs Signal Fade? & the Best Higgs Plots Revealed

Abstract

The CMS excess did not fade at all, the difference was due to a change in the analysis from Cut-based to MVA-based for the dominant WW channel. The ATLAS combinations when reconstructed consistently only show a small decrease in the excesses. Not the large decrease advertised. Higgs boson hints are still alive. What is particularly interesting now is the bump at 140 GeV. Some people said that this excess came mostly from the WW channel, yet when the WW channel is removed the bump is still there with nearly 2-sigma significance. The two bumps peaking at 118 GeV and 128 GeV are also the right size for a Higgs signal but error bands are still too big. Any of these bumps could be statistical fluctuations but it is very unlikely that they all are. With current data available in the high-resolution channels it is not yet possible to draw robust conclusions, but I think I have demonstrated that this will be the best way to find the Higgs with future data. I hope the experimenters will take note and produce similar plots from the official data. Updated results with 2.5/fb could appear within weeks and we will see where the three candidate bumps are heading.