"Since the first single-experiment observation of the Higgs boson decay to tau-leptons one year ago, CMS, along with our colleagues in ATLAS, has observed the coupling of the Higgs boson to the heaviest fermions: the tau, the top quark, and now the bottom quark," said Joel Butler, spokesperson of the CMS collaboration. The finding, presented today at CERN by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is consistent with the hypothesis that the all-pervading quantum field behind the Higgs boson also gives mass to the bottom quark. Our success is thanks to the excellent performance of the LHC and the ATLAS detector, and the application of highly sophisticated analysis techniques to our large dataset.”

Physicists were curious to see whether the decay of the Higgs boson would follow the Standard Model of particle physics which gives the prediction that 60 percent of Higgs boson decays will see the Higgs particle continuing life as bottom quarks which, out of the six different flavors of quarks, just happens to be the second heaviest out of them all. Because of this, it is quite difficult to “isolate the Higgs-boson decay signal from the background noise associated with such processes.”

However, Higgs boson decay channels that aren’t quite as common, like the process of photons decaying, are much simpler to differentiate from background noise, and it was determined that the decay of the Higgs boson was in keeping with the Standard Model prediction. Then you want to measure everything about it.” Karl Jakobs, spokesperson of the ATLAS collaboration, said the observation is a “major milestone in the exploration of the Higgs boson.” He said: “It shows that the ATLAS and CMS experiments have achieved deep understanding of their data and a control of backgrounds that surpasses expectations.
For the first time, scientists observe the Higgs Boson decay into bottom quarks. This supports a prediction in the Standard Model of particle physics.