https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2005-02255-4
experimental physics
The experimental status of Higgs Sector of the Standard Electroweak Model at the end of the LEP-SLC era
Département de Physique Nucléaire et Corpusculaire, Université de Genéve, 24,quai Ernest-Ansermet, 1211, Genéve 4, Switzerland
* e-mail: john.field@cern.ch
A method is proposed to calculate the confidence level for agreement of data with the Higgs sector of the Standard Model (SM). This is done by combining information from direct and indirect Higgs Boson searches. Good agreement with the SM is found for 
GeV using the observables most sensitive to m
H
: A
l
and m
W
. In particular, quantum corrections, as predicted by the SM, are observed with a statistical significance of forty-four standard deviations. However, apparent deviations from the SM of 3.7
and 2.8 are found for the Z 
and right-handed Zb 
couplings respectively. The maximum confidence level for agreement with the SM of the entire data set considered is 
for 
GeV. The reason why confidence levels about an order of magnitude higher than this have been claimed for global fits to similar data sets is explained.
© Springer-Verlag, 2005
