A fundamental test of the Higgs Yukawa coupling at RHIC in A+A collisions

Abstract

Searches for the intermediate boson, $W^{\pm }$, the heavy quantum of the Weak Interaction, via its semi-leptonic decay, $W\to e+\nu$, in the 1970's instead discovered unexpectedly large hadron production at high $p_T$, notably ${\pi }^0$, which provided a huge background of $e^{\pm }$ from internal and external conversions. Methods developed at the CERN ISR which led to the discovery of direct-single-$e^{\pm }$ in 1974, later determined to be from the semi-leptonic decay of charm which had not yet been discovered, were used by PHENIX at RHIC to make precision measurements of heavy quark production in p-p and Au+Au collisions, leading to the puzzle of apparent equal suppression of light and heavy quarks in the QGP. If the Higgs mechanism gives mass to gauge bosons but not to fermions, then a proposal that all 6 quarks are nearly massless in a QGP, which would resolve the puzzle, can not be excluded. This proposal can be tested with future measurements of heavy quark correlations in A+A collisions

12 pages, 16 figures, 26th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Ocho Rios, Jamaica WI, January 2-9, 2010. Corrected citation of 1974 direct single lepton discovery

References in corpus (2)

• Energy Loss and Flow of Heavy Quarks in Au+Au Collisions at sqrt(s_NN) = 200 GeV
• Measurement of high-p_T Single Electrons from Heavy-Flavor Decays in p+p Collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV