Observation of an excess in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson at ALEPH

A search has been performed for the Standard Model Higgs bosonin the data sample collected with the ALEPHdetector at LEP, at centre-of-mass energies up to 209 GeV. An excess of 3σ beyond the background expectation is found, consistent with the production of the Higgs bosonwith a mass near 114 GeV/c2. Much of this excess is seen in the four-jet analyses, where three high purity events are selected.