Anomalies in high-energy physics

Andrew Fowlie

July 9, 2015

I am cataloging unresolved experimental anomalies in high-energy physics because

The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)

Caveat emptor:

If those caveats cannot deter you from attempting to build a theory that explains all my anomalies, I offer a final maxim:

A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)

I think some of the “facts” in my list are indeed likely to be wrong. Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, here is the table.

Year Anomaly Experiment Resolutions Significance
1990 Flyby anomalies NASA, see wiki [3] Data from Juno soon Significant for some missions
1998 Pioneer 10 and 11 anomaly NASA [4] Thermal recoil [5, 6] Dead
1999 Dark matter direct detection DAMA/LIBRA [7] ~ 8σ
2000 Muon g - 2 Brookhaven [8] SUSY [9] 3.6σ [10]
2001 Higgs at 98GeV LEP [11] NMSSM [12] 2.3σ (local)
2003 Lithium 7 problem WMAP, see [13] ~ 4σ [13]
2008 “Ghost” multi-muon events Tevatron CDF [14, 15] Not QCD [16] “54437 ± 14171 ghost events” [15]
2008 High-energy positron excess Pamela [17], AMS [18] Dead? — limited statistics [19] Dead?
2010 Proton radius puzzle See [20, 21] Many [22] ~ 7σ
2011 Wjj anomaly CDF [23] Many [24] 4.1σ [24], 3.1σ [23]
2011 Top asymmetries D0 [25] ~ 2σ
2013 PeV neutrinos IceCube [26] 2.8σ
2014 WR CMS [27] LR models 2.8σ (local) [27]
2014 σ(pp → WW) LHC [28, 29, 30] SUSY [31] 1 - 2σ [31]
2014 r ~ 0.2 BICEP [32] Dead — dust [33] Dead (was ~ 7σ [32])
2014 ~ 137GeV Higgs CMS [34] BLSSM [35] 2.9σ [35]
2014 Higgs LFV decays CMS [36] Type-III 2HDM [37], Gauged B - L [38] 2.5σ
2014 ttH → ℓℓ CMS [39] ~ 2σ
2014 mA ~ 560GeV CMS [40] 1.1σ (global), 2.6σ (local)
2014 Leptoquarks at 650GeV CMS [41] Leptoquarks “a significant excess is observed”
2014 3.5 keV line XMM-Newton telescope [42, 43] Annihilating DM ~ 4σ [43]
2014 “Hooperon” ~GeV γ-rays Fermi, see [44] 1–40GeV DM to b-quarks [44] ~ 40σ
2015 ~ 80GeV edge in mℓℓ CMS [45] Not SUSY [46], not found by ATLAS [47] Dead? [47], was 2.6σ (local)
2015 Dip in power spectrum at ℓ ~ 100 Planck [48] Small
2015 B0 → K*μμ form-factor LHCb [49], also see summary [50] Leptoquark [51]/Z′ [52] p-value = 0.5% (global), 3.7σ (local)
2015 Lepton non-universality in B+ → K*ℓℓ LHCb [53] Leptoquark [51]/Z′ [52] 2.6σ
2015 mA ~ 220GeV ATLAS [54] p-value = 0.014
2015 ~GeV γ-rays in dwarf galaxy Fermi-LAT, see [55] Annihilating DM 3.6σ
2015 Z → ℓℓ excess ATLAS [47] SUSY, specifically GMSB 3.0σ (global, only looking near mℓℓ ≈ mZ)
2015 B0 → K*μμ form-factor (again, persistent) LHCb, preliminary, see talk [56] 3.7σ (“naive”)
2015 Diboson excess ATLAS [57] SU(2) gauge bosons at 2TeV [58] 2.5σ (global, WZ), other hints in CMS and ATLAS [59, 60, 61]

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