CMS records highest-energy lepton pairs to date, testing the possibility of a composite Higgs boson
The CMS experiment recently used the complete proton-proton collision dataset collected during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider and the first two years of Run 3, namely 2022 to 2023, to search for clues that the Higgs boson may be composed of smaller constituents. The analysis results show that the experimental data are consistent with Standard Model predictions, with no evidence pointing to new physics yet. Whether the Higgs boson is an elementary particle or a composite particle with deeper structure is a long-standing question in particle physics. To test this possibility, the CMS team adopted two complementary approaches: on one hand, directly searching for new heavy particles that could be produced at the Large Hadron Collider; on the other hand, indirectly probing the effects of new particles with higher masses that are difficult to produce directly through subtle deviations in high-energy electron pair and muon pair production processes.
2026-08-10
