Two years after CERN scientists announced the discovery of the famed and elusive Higgs Boson, a team of physicists from Denmark, Belgium, and the United Kingdom, speculates that the particle may have never been discovered at all.

“The CERN data are generally taken as evidence that the particle is the Higgs particle. It is true that the Higgs particle can explain the data but there can be other explanations, we would also get these data from other particles,” said Dr Mads Toudal Frandsen of the University of Southern Denmark, the senior author of the study published in the journal Physical Review D (arXiv.org preprint).

The study does not debunk the possibility that CERN physicists have discovered the Higgs boson. That is still possible – but it is equally possible that it is a different kind of particle.

“The current data is not precise enough to determine exactly what the particle is. It could be a number of other known particles,” Dr Frandsen said.

“But if it wasn’t the Higgs particle, that was found in CERN’s particle accelerator, then what was it? We believe that it may be a so-called techni-Higgs particle. This particle is in some ways similar to the Higgs boson – hence half of the name.”

Although the techni-Higgs particle and Higgs boson can easily be confused in experiments, they are two very different particles belonging to two very different theories of how the Universe was created.

The Higgs particle is the missing piece in the theory called the Standard Model.

This theory describes three of the four forces of nature.

“But it does not explain what dark matter is – the substance that makes up most of the universe. A techni-Higgs particle, if it exists, is a completely different thing,” the scientists said.

“A techni-Higgs particle is not an elementary particle. Instead, it consists of so-called techni-quarks, which we believe are elementary. Techni-quarks may bind together in various ways to form for instance techni-Higgs particles, while other combinations may form dark matter,” Dr Frandsen said.

“We therefore expect to find several different particles at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, all built by techni-quarks.”

If techni-quarks exist, there must be a force to bind them together so that they can form particles.

None of the four known forces of nature (gravity, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force) are any good at binding techni-quarks together.

“There must therefore be a yet undiscovered force of nature. This force is called the technicolor force.”

“What was found last year in CERN’s accelerator could thus be either the Higgs particle of the Standard Model or a light techni-Higgs particle, composed of two techni-quarks.”

More data from CERN will probably be able to determine if it was a Higgs or a techni-Higgs particle.

“If CERN gets an even more powerful accelerator, it will in principle be able to observe techni-quarks directly.”

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Alexander Belyaev et al. 2014. Technicolor Higgs boson in the light of LHC data. Phys. Rev. D 90, 035012; doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.90.035012