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

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 collisionsComment: 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 discover

Studies of intermediate vector boson production and decay in U(A)(1) at the CERN proton - anti-proton collider

An extensive study of production and decay properties of charged and neutral Intermediate Vector Bosons (IVB) at the CERN proton-antiproton collider is presented. Intermediate Vector Bosons were detected in the electron, muon, and tau decay modes at centre-of-mass energies of 0.546 and 0.630 TeV. This paper is a summary, based on all the available data from the UA1 experiment from the running periods 1982-1985. Results are presented and compared with expectations of the Standard Eletroweak Model and QCD-improved Drell-Yan annihilation processes. The general conclusion is that there is an excellent agreement between the predictions of the Standard Model and our measurements. © 1989 Springer-Verlag