Higgs Discovery Points to New Fundamental Constant

LY12930 - The discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider last year has deep implications for gravitational theories that explain the evolution of our universe. Indeed, the Higgs boson can couple to the gravitational field in a very unique way. This implies the existence of a new fundamental coupling constant in nature, which could be significant, for example, for cosmic inflation. In a paper to appear in the Physical Review Letters, physicists show that the recent discovery at CERN enables us to set the first bound ever on the magnitude of this new parameter of nature. Measuring the coupling of the Higgs boson to the gravitational field with precision ought to have deep implications for the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics and help to fulfill Einstein’s dream.