Pauli's Other Principle

As I am currently stretched between continents, I ponder over the differences between the US and Europe. Apart from the taste of food and the human shapes, there seems to be a fundamental difference at the level of particle physics. Let's have a look at the recent discoveries of elementary particles.

• Tau neutrino, 2000, DONUT, Fermilab, United States
• Top quark, 1995, Tevatron, Fermilab, United States
• W and Z bosons, 1983 SPS, CERN, Switzerland
• Gluon, 1979, Petra, DESY, Germany
• Bottom quark, 1977, Fermilab, United States
• Tau, 1975, SPEAR, SLAC, United States
• Charm quark, 1974, SLAC/BNL, United States
• and so on...

The generalization is known as Pauli's other principle:

Fermions are discovered in the US, whereas bosons are discovered in Europe.

Pauli's other principle has been confirmed in numerous experiments, sometimes quite spectacularly. Around 1974, the most powerful accelarator in the world was the ISR at CERN, and it produced charmonium in commercial quantities. However, since a discovery of the J/Psi at CERN would contradict Pauli's other principle, the experiment rejected the data with pT < 3.2 GeV (the J/Psi is at 3.1 GeV). Some significant effort was also undertaken to miss the upsilon at 10 GeV. The failure of the SSC project may also have its roots in Pauli's other principle: the SSC would be able to discover the Higgs boson.

Since, there is no more doubt that Pauli's other principle is a fundamental law of nature, it can be used to formulate predictions. One obvious implication is that Higgs searches at the Tevatron are pointless, and resources should be reallocated to searches for new heavy quarks. The Higgs boson, if it exists, will be discovered at the LHC. The new physics at the LHC, however, is severely constrained. Typical solutions to the hierarchy problem predict new fermions at the TeV scale. The little Higgs or extra dimensional scenarios predict a vector-like partner of the top quark at accessible energies, while supersymmetry predicts fermionic partners of the gauge bosons. On the other hand, the Standard Model with a light Higgs is perfectly consistent with Pauli's other principle...

Thanks to Jose Ramon for pointing out the facts to me.