Abstract :

I would like to put in context the announcement of the discovery of a new boson in the pp collision experiments at CERN. I will begin by summarizing the importance of the 'direct' observation of the Higgs boson in particle collisions, for proving the correctness of our current description of the theory of fundamental interactions among elementary constituents of matter: the Standard Model (SM). I will also summarize theoretical predictions for various properties of this particle such as its spin, mass, charge etc.. I will then discuss the theoretical implications of the above mentioned discovery for the SM and theories of particle interactions beyond that. I will discuss how the determination of the various properties of this new state will help confirm whether it is THE Higgs boson (or otherwise), providing possible glimpses of Physics Beyond the Standard Model (new particles, new interactions, ...), which we theorists believe must exist, but without being able to give a clear prediction for the energy scale at which it should exist. Moreover, absence of any 'direct' signal for such physics at the LHC so far, makes such indirect hints from the Higgs sector very valuable.