Beyond the standard Higgs
Professor Christophe Grojean, ICREA/IFAE, Barcelona, Spain
Abstract
An elementary, weakly coupled and solitary Higgs boson allows to extend the validity of the Standard Model up to very high energy, maybe as high as the Planck scale. Nonetheless, this scenario fails to fill the universe with Dark Matter and do not explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry. However, amending the Standard Model tends to destabilize the weak scale by large quantum corrections to the Higgs potential. New degrees of freedom, new forces, new organizing principles are requested to provide a consistent and natural description of physics beyond the standard Higgs.
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Professor Christophe Grojean, ICREA/IFAE, Barcelona, Spain
Professor Christophe Grojean, ICREA/IFAE, Barcelona, Spain
Biography
Christophe Grojean started his research work in theoretical high energy physics at CEA Saclay and got his PhD from Orsay University in 1999. He then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley before being hired on a permanent research position at Saclay. In 2004, he was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 2006, he joined the theory unit at CERN first as a fellow and then as junior staff scientist. In the fall of 2012, he joined the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies at UAB as an ICREA Research Professor. He has worked on various topics in particle physics beyond the Standard Model and a few years ago he specialized himself in the physics and the dynamics of the Higgs boson and its possible various incarnations.
Searches beyond supersymmetry
Professor David Charlton, University of Birmingham, UK
Abstract
The questions raised by the discovery of the light Higgs boson suggest new physics, and new particles, may be near to hand, at the energies now – and soon – being probed at the LHC. An extensive programme of searches for new particles is in place, exploring many possibilities. In the absence of definite predictions, the searches look at many and varied event types, hunting in numerous ways for deviations in the data from the background expectations from known processes.
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Professor David Charlton, University of Birmingham, UK
Professor David Charlton, University of Birmingham, UK
Biography
Dave Charlton has been the Spokesperson of the ATLAS Collaboration since March 2013. Before that he was Deputy Spokesperson for four years, and previously Physics Coordinator in 2008-9. He has been Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Birmingham since 2005. During ATLAS construction, he worked on two different pieces of the detector: hybrid readout circuits for the silicon strip sensors of the Semiconductor Tracker (SCT) detector; and on the first-level calorimeter trigger system, responsible for selecting one-in-ten-thousand interesting events within a few microseconds of the proton-proton interactions taking place in ATLAS. From 1989 to 2001, he worked on the OPAL experiment at the LEP electron-positron collider at CERN, on data analysis, components of the trigger and data acquisition systems, muon identification, and more. He was OPAL's Physics Coordinator in 1996-7. He was a Royal Society University Research Fellow from 1994 to 2002. Before 1989 he was a PhD student on the UA1 experiment, searching for – and failing to find – the top quark, which was too massive to be detected there.
Multiple solutions in supersymmetry and the Higgs
Professor Ben Allanach, University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Searches for supersymmetric particles can be difficult to interpret. Here, we shall discuss the fact that, even given a well defined model of supersymmetry breaking with few parameters, there can be multiple solutions. These multiple solutions are physically different, and could potentially mean that points in parameter space have been ruled out by interpretations of LHC data when they shouldn't have been. We shall explain what such multiple solutions are, what they mean and why they haven't been discovered before. We shall illustrate their existence in the Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, although we expect them to be present in other scenarios too.
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Professor Ben Allanach, University of Cambridge, UK
Professor Ben Allanach, University of Cambridge, UK
Biography
Ben Allanach is a Professor of theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge and Principal Investigator for theoretical high energy physics there. He primarily works on interpreting the Large Hadron Collider data, asking what they mean for various theories such as supersymmetry, extra dimensions and models of dark matter. His computer program SOFTSUSY, which calculates the masses and other properties of supersymmetric particles, is used by both general purpose LHC experiments to interpret their searches. He was one of the founding architects of the "SUSY Les Houches accord", which allows the integrated use of such information to be universally communicated between the many different computer programs that calculate various different physical observables. He has been working with experiments to suggest the best ways of presenting complex experimental information. He was scientific secretary for the CERN Council Strategy Group in 2005-2006, and was awarded a Gambrinus Fellowship at Dortmund University of Technology in 2008.
Searches for the supersymmetry
Professor Paris Sphicas, Athens/CERN, Greece
Abstract
With the discovery of a Higgs boson at the LHC, the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particles and their interactions is now on rock-solid ground, providing an unfailing and remarkably accurate description of experiments with and without high-energy accelerators. With the physics of the very small thought to be understood at energy scales of at least 100 GeV, the situation is reminiscent of previous times in history when our knowledge of nature was deemed to be “complete”. There are hints that this may once more not be so: from astrophysical observations to theoretical calculations of the Higgs sector, there are several indications that some physics “beyond the SM” should exist. To this day, Supersymmetry (SUSY) remains one of the most popular extensions to the SM. A very significant effort has already been invested in searching for signs of the mirror world of particles hypothesized by SUSY, while the LHC experiments are currently carefully combing through their data samples looking for places where SUSY might be hiding. The talk will present a broad-brush picture of “the why, the what and the how” this search is carried out, along with the reasons for which the expectations are still so very high.
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Professor Paris Sphicas, Athens/CERN, Greece
Professor Paris Sphicas, Athens/CERN, Greece
Biography
PhD from MIT on UA1 (jet physics). Scientific associate at CERN (UA1, heavy flavors), then Wilson fellow at Fermilab (CDF). Assistant professor at MIT, 1990, always on CDF, working on top and B physics -- then associate then full prof (MIT). Joined CMS experiment at LHC in 94, working on trigger/DAQ. At CERN since 1997, prof of physics at Univ of Athens since 2002. In CMS: till 2004 Data Acquisition System and High Level Trigger; 2005-06 head of Computing. Software and Physics, 2007-2009 physics coordinator, 2012-2013 chair of CMS Publications Committee. From Jan 2014 deputy spokesperson. Working on SUSY searches.