Evidence for the 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying to a pair of tau leptons

A search for a standard model Higgs boson decaying into a pair of tau leptons is performed using events recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC in 2011 and 2012. The dataset corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 4.9 fb(-1) at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and 19.7 fb(-1) at 8 TeV. Each tau lepton decays hadronically or leptonically to an electron or a muon, leading to six different final states for the tau-lepton pair, all considered in this analysis. An excess of events is observed over the expected background contributions, with a local significance larger than 3 standard deviations for m (H) values between 115 and 130 GeV. The best fit of the observed H -> tau tau signal cross section times branching fraction for m(H) = 125 GeV is 0.78 +/- 0.27 times the standard model expectation. These observations constitute evidence for the 125 GeV Higgs boson decaying to a pair of tau leptons

Measurement of higher-order harmonic azimuthal anisotropy in PbPb collisions at root s(NN)=2.76 TeV

Measurements are presented by the CMS Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the higher-order harmonic coefficients that describe the azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles emitted in root s(NN) = 2.76 TeV PbPb collisions. Expressed in terms of the Fourier components of the azimuthal distribution, the n = 3-6 harmonic coefficients are presented for charged particles as a function of their transverse momentum (0.3 < p(T) < 8.0 GeV/c), collision centrality (0%-70%), and pseudorapidity (|eta| < 2.0). The data are analyzed using the event plane, multiparticle cumulant, and Lee-Yang zeros methods, which provide different sensitivities to initial-state fluctuations. Taken together with earlier LHC measurements of elliptic flow (n = 2), the results on higher-order harmonic coefficients develop a more complete picture of the collective motion in high-energy heavy-ion collisions and shed light on the properties of the produced medium