Chapter 15: The Higgs Boson Search and Discovery

We present a brief account of the search for the Higgs boson at the three major colliders that have operated over the last three decades: LEP, the Tevatron, and the LHC. The experimental challenges encountered stemmed from the distinct event phenomenology as determined by the colliders energy and the possible values for the Higgs boson mass, and from the capability of these colliders to deliver as much collision data as possible to fully explore the mass spectrum within their reach. Focusing more on the hadron collider searches during the last decade, we discuss how the search for the Higgs boson was advanced through mastering the experimental signatures of standard theory backgrounds, through the comprehensive utilization of the features of the detectors involved in the searches, and by means of advanced data analysis techniques. The search culminated in 2012 with the discovery, by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, of a Higgs-like particle with mass close to 125 GeV, confirmed more recently to have properties consistent with those expected from the standard theory Higgs boson.