The physics of the large hadron collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Its aim is to study the physics of elementary particles at the highest energies accessible to accelerators. It is believed that the Higgs boson (a last particle predicted by the Standard Model that is yet to be found) and the lightest particles of the Minimal Supersymmetric Model should be accessible at the LHC energies. These lectures give a short overview of the physics program and the technological challenges this collider faces.     

Bremsstrahlung model for hadron production at large transverse momentum

A hadronic bremsstrahlung model is presented which provides an understanding of several of the recently observed phenomena at large transverse momenta.     

Measuring supersymmetry at the large hadron collider

The large hadron collider (LHC) should have the ability to detect supersymmetric particles if low-energy supersymmetry solves the hierarchy problem. Studies of the LHC detection reach, and the ability to measure properties of supersymmetric particles are currently underway. We highlight some of these, such as the reach in minimal supergravity space and correlation with a fine-tuning parameter, precision measurements of edge variables, anomaly or gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. Supersymmetry with baryon-number violation seems at first glance more difficult to detect, but proves to be possible by using leptons from cascade decays.     

The first year at the large hadron collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) offers unprecedented opportunities to study in detail interactions in the unexplored energy range around 1 TeV, where new physical phenomena undoubtedly exist. The luminosity expected in the first year of LHC operation will make it possible to thoroughly tune and calibrate physical facilities, clear up characteristics of the main, most intense processes, and search for new entities, such as the Higgs boson, light supersymmetric particles, and new heavy gauge bosons, with a sensitivity high enough to allow their observation.     

Detector electronics for experiments at the large hadron collider

The state of the art of a tracking detector and calorimeter electronics that are being developed for experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is discussed. Construction of the detectors is briefly described. The problems of fabrication of integrated circuits based on a radiation-resistant technology are considered, as well as the solution to the problem of microconnections between sensitive elements and readout amplifiers in two-coordinate semiconductor detectors. The parameters and block diagrams of both analog and digital integrated circuits are given; these circuits are used for amplifying and shaping the signals measured by tracking detectors of elementary particles and calorimeters. The contributions of Russian experimenters and physicists of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research to the development of detector electronics for experiments at the LHC is described.     

Signatures for right-handed neutrinos at the large hadron collider

We explore possible signatures for right-handed neutrinos in a TeV scale B-L extension of the standard model at the Large Hadron Collider. The studied four lepton signal has a tiny standard model background. We find the signal experimentally accessible at the LHC for the considered parameter regions.     

The standard model Higgs search at the large hadron collider

The experiments at the large hadron collider (LHC) will probe for Higgs boson in the mass range between the lower bound on the Higgs mass set by the experiments at the large electron positron collider (LEP) and the unitarity bound (∼1 TeV). Strategies are being developed to look for signatures of Higgs boson and measure its properties. In this paper results from full detector simulation-based studies on Higgs discovery from both ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC will be presented. Results of simulation studies on Higgs coupling measurement at LHC will be discussed. on behalf of the CMS and the ATLAS Collaborations     

Theoretical expectations for σtot at the large hadron collider

In this note, we summarize and compare various model predictions forpp total cross-section σ _tot ^pp , giving an estimate of the range of predictions for the total cross-section, σ _tot ^pp expected at the LHC. We concentrate on the results for σ _tot ^pp obtained in a particular QCD based model of the energy dependence of the total cross-section, including the effect of soft gluon radiation. We obtain the range of predictions in this model by exploring the allowed range of model parameters. We further give a handy parametrisation of these results which incidentally spans the range of various other available predictions at the LHC as well     

Physics perspectives of the ALICE experiment at the large hadron collider

The large hadron collider (LHC) under construction at CERN will deliver ion beams up to centre of mass energies of the order of 5.5 TeV per nucleon, in case of lead. If compared to the available facilities for the study of nucleus-nucleus collisions (SpS and RHIC), this represents a huge step forward in terms of both volume and energy density that can be attained in nuclear interactions. ALICE (a large ion collider experiment) is the only detector specifically designed for the physics of nuclear collisions at LHC, even though it can also study high cross-section processes occurring in proton-proton collisions. The main goal of the experiment is to observe and study the phase transition from hadronic matter to deconfined partonic matter (quark gluon plasma —QGP). ALICE is conceived as a general-purpose detector and will address most of the phenomena related to the QGP formation at LHC energies: for this purpose, a large fraction of the hadrons, leptons and photons produced in each interaction will be measured and identified.     

T-odd quarks at the large hadron collider: 2010-2012

We study the potential of the current Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 7 TeV run to search for heavy, colored vector-like fermions, which are assumed to carry a conserved Z₂ quantum number forcing them to be pair-produced. Each fermion is assumed to decay directly into a Standard Model quark and an invisible stable particle. T-odd quarks and the lightest T-odd particle (LTP) of the Littlest Higgs model with T-parity provide an example of this setup. We estimate the bounds based on the published CMS search for events with jets and missing transverse energy in the 35 pb−1 data set collected in the 2010 run. We find that T-odd quark masses below about 450 GeV are ruled out for the LTP mass about 100 GeV. This bound is somewhat stronger than the published Tevatron constraint. We also estimate the reach with higher integrated luminosities expected in the 2011-2012 run. If no deviation from the SM is observed, we expect that a bound on the T-odd quark mass of about 650 GeV, for the LTP mass of 300 GeV and below, can be achieved with 1 fb−1 of data. We comment on the possibility of using initial-state radiation jets to constrain the region with nearly-degenerate T-odd quark and LTP.     

Jet signals for low mass strings at the large hadron collider

The mass scale M{s} of superstring theory is an arbitrary parameter that can be as low as few TeVs if the Universe contains large extra dimensions. We propose a search for the effects of Regge excitations of fundamental strings at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in the process pp-->gamma+jet. The underlying parton process is dominantly the single photon production in gluon fusion, gg-->gammag, with open string states propagating in intermediate channels. If the photon mixes with the gauge boson of the baryon number, which is a common feature of D-brane quivers, the amplitude appears already at the string disk level. It is completely determined by the mixing parameter-and it is otherwise model (compactification) independent. Even for relatively small mixing, 100 fb{-1} of LHC data could probe deviations from standard model physics, at a 5sigma significance, for M{s} as large as 3.3 TeV.     

Extracting muon momentum scale corrections for hadron collider experiments

The quark condensate is calculated within the world-line effective-action formalism, by using for the Wilson loop an ansatz provided by the stochastic vacuum model. Starting with the relation between the quark and the gluon condensates in the heavy-quark limit, we diminish the current quark mass down to the value of the inverse vacuum correlation length, finding in this way a 64?% decrease in the absolute value of the quark condensate. In particular, we find that the conventional formula for the heavy-quark condensate cannot be applied to the c-quark, and that the corrections to this formula can reach 23?% even in the case of the b-quark. We also demonstrate that, for an exponential parametrization of the two-point correlation function of gluonic field strengths, the quark condensate does not depend on the non-confining non-perturbative interactions of the stochastic background Yang?CMills fields.     

Pion production at large transverse momentum

A constituent interchange model is used to give a natural explanation of the observed energy dependence of ISR data for π° production at 90°. It is predicted that at large fixed p_T and sufficiently high energy the cross section will become constant, with a p_T dependence of (p_T²)^?2.5. It is also tentatively suggested that the e⁺e^? annihilation structure function $\text{ν}\text{W}{}_2$ should behave like ω^?1.5 near ω = 0.     

Particle production at large transverse momentum

From a simple fragmentation approach to inelastic production at large fixed angles, we obtain an inclusive cross-section which falls as an inverse power of large transverse momentum p_T and which scales according to (p_T/√s), both consistent with ISR data. Predictions for charge ratios and associated multiplicities are also presented and compared with available data.     

Distinguishing the higgs boson from the dilaton at the large hadron collider

It is likely that the LHC will observe a color- and charge-neutral scalar whose decays are consistent with those of the standard model (SM) Higgs boson. The Higgs interpretation of such a discovery is not the only possibility. For example, electroweak symmetry breaking could be triggered by a spontaneously broken, nearly conformal sector. The spectrum of states at the electroweak scale would then contain a narrow scalar resonance, the pseudo-Goldstone boson of conformal symmetry breaking, with Higgs-boson-like properties. If the conformal sector is strongly coupled, this pseudodilaton may be the only new state accessible at high energy colliders. We discuss the prospects for distinguishing this mode from a minimal Higgs boson at the LHC and ILC. The main discriminants between the two scenarios are (i) cubic self-interactions and (ii) a potential enhancement of couplings to massless SM gauge bosons.     

Proton enhancement at large pT at the CERN large hadron collider without structure in associated-particle distribution

The production of pions and protons in the pT range between 10 and 20 GeV/c for Pb+Pb collisions at CERN LHC is studied in the recombination model. It is shown that the dominant mechanism for hadronization is the recombination of shower partons from neighboring jets when the jet density is high. Protons are more copiously produced than pions in that pT range because the coalescing partons can have lower momentum fractions, but no thermal partons are involved. The proton-to-pion ratio can be as high as 20. When such high pT hadrons are used as trigger particles, there will not be any associated particles that are not in the background.     

Next-to-next-to-leading-order subtraction formalism in hadron collisions and its application to Higgs-boson production at the large hadron collider

We consider higher-order QCD corrections to the production of colorless high-mass systems (lepton pairs, vector bosons, Higgs bosons, etc.) in hadron collisions. We propose a new formulation of the subtraction method to numerically compute arbitrary infrared-safe observables for this class of processes. To cancel the infrared divergences, we exploit the universal behavior of the associated transverse-momentum (qT) distributions in the small-qT region. The method is illustrated in general terms up to the next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD perturbation theory. As a first explicit application, we study Higgs-boson production through gluon fusion. Our calculation is implemented in a parton level Monte Carlo program that includes the decay of the Higgs boson into two photons. We present selected numerical results at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.