trial by combat

The 750 GeV diphoton resonance has made a big impact on theoretical particle physics. The number of papers on the topic is already legendary, and they keep coming at the rate of order 10 per week. Given that the Backović model is falsified, there's no longer a theoretical upper limit. Does this mean we are not dealing with the classical ambulance chasing scenario? The answer may be known in the next days.So who's leading this race? What kind of question is that, you may shout, of course it's Strumia! And you would be wrong, independently of the metric. For this contest, I will consider two different metrics: thethat counts the number of papers on the topic, and thethat counts how many times these papers have been cited.In the first category, the contest is much more fierce than one might expect: it takes 8 papers to be the leader, and 7 papers may not be enough to even get on the podium! Among the 3 authors with 7 papers the final classification is decided bythe citation count. The result is ():Citations, tja... Social dynamics of our community encourages referencing all previous work on the topic, rather than just the relevant ones, which in this particular case triggered a period of inflation. One day soon citation numbers will mean as much as authorship in experimental particle physics. But for now the size of the h-factor is still an important measure of virility for theorists. If the citation count rather the number of papers is the main criterion, the iron throne is taken by a Targaryen contender ():This explains why the resonance is usually denoted by the letter S.Now that the 750 GeV excess is officially dead, one can give the final classification. The race for the iron throne was tight till the end, but there could only be one winner:As you can see, in this race the long-term strategy and persistence proved to be more important than pulling off a few early victories. In the other category there have also been changes in the final stretch: the winner added 3 papers in the period between the un-official and official announcement of the demise of the 750 GeV resonance. The final standing are:Congratulations for all the winners. For all the rest, wish you more luck and persistence in the next edition, provided it will take place.