Previously, the Higgs boson has been observed decaying to photons, tau-leptons, and W and Z bosons. However, these impressive achievements represent only 30 percent of Higgs boson decays. The Higgs boson's favoured decay to a pair of b-quarks (H→bb) was predicted to happen around 58 percent of the time, thus driving the short lifetime of the Higgs boson, and thus remained elusive. Observing this decay would fill in one of the big missing pieces of our knowledge of the Higgs sector and confirm that the Higgs mechanism is responsible for the masses of quarks; additionally, it might also provide hints of new physics beyond our current theories. All in all, it is a vital missing piece of the Higgs boson puzzle.
Stephen Sekula
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