THE SEARCHES FOR HIGGS BOSONS AT LEP

The legacy of the LEP program encompasses an extensive investigation of the electroweak interaction and the most comprehensive search to date for the origin of spontaneous symmetry breaking. The results comprise a large variety of theoretical models challenged by dedicated searches and a persistent search for the standard-model Higgs boson. The direct search for the standard-model Higgs boson confronted an excess of signal-like events in the final year. This observation reaches a significance of approximately two standard deviations for a Higgs boson mass of 115.6 GeV/c², a value consistent with the mass range indicated by electroweak precision measurements. The definitive confirmation of the standard-model Higgs boson search and the continued investigation for a Higgs sector at higher masses await new data from the Tevatron and LHC colliders.