Newv Higgs family particle found:

https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-have-discovered-a-new-kind-of-higgs-relative-s...

"Take this new kind of relative to the Higgs boson, for example. It was found lurking in a room temperature chunk of layered tellurium crystals. Unlike its famous cousin, it didn't take years of smashing up particles to spot it, either. Just a clever use of some lasers and a trick for unweaving their photon's quantum properties.

"'It's not every day you find a new particle sitting on your tabletop," says Kenneth Burch, a Boston College physicist and the lead co-author of the study announcing the discovery of the particle.

"Burch and his colleagues caught sight of what's known as an axial Higgs mode, a quantum wiggle that technically qualifies as a new kind of particle.

***

"'The detection of the axial Higgs was predicted in high-energy particle physics to explain dark matter," says Burch.

"'However, it has never been observed. Its appearance in a condensed matter system was completely surprising and heralds the discovery of a new broken symmetry state that had not been predicted."

***

"With the Higgs field's discovery, we could, at last, confirm our understanding of how components of the model gained mass while at rest. It was a huge win for physics, one we're still using to understand the inner mechanics of matter.

"While any single Higgs particle exists for barely a fraction of a second, it's a particle in the truest sense of the word, blinking briefly into reality as a discrete excitation in a quantum field.

***

"A spin-1 or axial Higgs mode not only does a similar job to the Higgs boson under very specific circumstances, it (and quasiparticles like it) could provide interesting grounds for studying the shadowy mass of dark matter.

"As a quasiparticle, the axial Higgs mode can only be seen emerging from the collective behaviors of a crowd. Spotting it requires knowing its signature amid a wash of quantum waves and then having a way to sift it out of the chaos.

"By sending perfectly coherent beams of light from two lasers through such material and then watching for telltale patterns in their alignment, Burch and his team uncovered the echo of an axial Higgs mode in layers of rare-earth tritelluride.

"'Unlike the extreme conditions typically required to observe new particles, this was done at room temperature in a table top experiment where we achieve quantum control of the mode by just changing the polarization of light," says Burch.

Comment: Hiding in plain sight. A possible clue to dark matter. Like the lady who thought the Earth rested on a tower of turtles, its particles all the way down.