Abstract

One model in particular, the Standard Model Higgs, is taken to have been confirmed by the Higgs boson discovery at the LHC, even though many models are compatible with the data. Some models even provided riskier predictions and should perhaps be regarded as having been even more strongly confirmed. This paper sketches an argument demonstrating this by comparing the confirmation of the Standard Model Higgs with that of the Higgs in minimal supersymmetry. The paper then attempts to provide a way of understanding this result by modelling it as a case of eliminative induction.

Highlights

  • New scientific models are constantly developed to uncover and explain the unknown and to better explain the known

  • I examine the effect of the discovery on the predictions of the dominant theory of particle physics, the Standard Model (SM), in comparison

  • In a recent paper analysing minimal supersymmetry (MSSM) parameters, Heinemeyer et al (2018) came to the following conclusion about the prospects of ruling out heavy Higgses: The SUSY Higgs boson mass scale is found above ∼ 1.3 TeV, rendering the light MSSM Higgs boson SM-like, in perfect agreement with the experimental data...the reduced MSSM is in natural agreement with all Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

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Summary

Introduction

New scientific models are constantly developed to uncover and explain the unknown and to better explain the known. Many models had been proposed that predicted some new particle, called a Higgs boson, would be found that is indicative of a mechanism responsible for generating the masses of the fundamental particles. A Higgs boson was certainly discovered, but since the discovery, many particle physicists have focused on determining what kind of Higgs it is. Analysing this requires taking a step beyond the confirmation of a Higgs, or of the Higgs mechanism [as undertaken in Dawid (2017)], and examining the reasoning that distinguishes between different Higgs models

Scientific Confirmation
The Case of the SM Higgs
Discovery and Confirmation
A Comparison with Minimal Supersymmetry
Two Puzzling Features
Eliminative Induction
Conjectures and Disconfirmations
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