Status of the Fourth Generation - A Brief Summary of B3SM-III Workshop in Four Parts

Abstract

This summary of the 3rd "Beyond the 3 Generation Standard Model" workshop presents the following four statements (and their implications) for the ongoing and future searches of a fourth generation: 1) The enhancement of the Higgs gluon-gluon production cross-section times branching fraction for many of the search channels studied at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is not a flat factor of 9; 2) Electroweak precision data allows for not only a fourth generation, even more generations are allowed; 3) Consideration of mixing significantly changes the conclusions about the interpretation of experimental constraints, and even a fully-degenerate fourth generation becomes allowed; 4) The features that make a fourth generation of fermions attractive are still valid even under the light of initial LHC results.