The Search for New Particles and Forces
In 2010, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the laboratory CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, began its exploration of physics at distances 10,000 smaller than an atomic nucleus. The first data-taking period of the LHC ran from 2010 to 2013, colliding protons at energies of 7 and 8 TeV (trillion electron volts).
Many novel observations were made, including the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson. However, the most fundamental questions that motivated the LHC remain unanswered. The second data-taking period of the LHC began last summer, at the higher energy of 13 TeV. Results from the first batch of higher-energy data have
already shifted the landscape, with more powerful exclusion of some hypotheses and tantalizing hints supporting others. The results from the next batch of data are highly anticipated; they will be announced in early August. In this talk, I will review the search for new basic interactions in nature and
the experimental methods that the LHC brings to this question. I will describe the implications of the first data at 13 TeV and preview some of the results that might appear later this summer.
Michael Peskin is an American theoretical physicist. He is currently a professor in the theory group at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
| The Search for New Particles and Forces |
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