Just earlier today the seminar for the W boson mass measurement from CMS has been publicized. The result is of course kept secret for now. I know a number of people who are feverishly awaiting to see what the first measurement of the CMS collaboration brings. To prepare the crowd Josh (our speaker) and Sarah did a nice piece on the significance of the W boson in Symmetry Magazine and there is also a more in depth article on electroweak precision measurements for the experts by our own Guillelmo (PPC) and Jan Kretzschmar. Some of my colleagues from ATLAS immediately contacted me not even pretending they did not know the result…. It is hard to keep a secret in large collaborations.
There are two camps, the people that mostly care about the mean value, the ‘sensationalists’, because the mean value will tell us whether it more agrees with very far off CDF measurement or whether it agrees more with the standard model prediction and the other less precise measurements. And then there are, the ‘technicians’, which really mainly care about the uncertainty that is going to be quoted.
Of course this is a simplification because any measurement needs a mean value and an uncertainty, but given that fact that it has taken CMS over 14 years to come out with a first measurement of mW, it would be embarrassing if the uncertainty would be too large, so the key feature is really the mean value and how small the uncertainty comes out in the end.
I booked my flight, the seminar is fittingly on the same day as the 70 Anniversary Festivities — I am assuming the room is going to be over packed!