Why Large Hadron Collider?

I discuss LHC physics in the historical perspective of the progress in particle physics. After a recap of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, I discuss the high energy colliders leading up to LHC and their role in the discovery of these SM particles. Then I discuss the two main physics issues of LHC, i.e. Higgs mechanism and supersymmetry. I briefly touch upon Higgs and SUSY searches at LHC along with their cosmological implications.     

Implications of the Higgs boson discovery

With the discovery of the Higgs boson by the LHC in 2012, a new era started in which we have direct experimental information on the physics behind the breaking of the electroweak (EW) symmetry. This breaking plays a fundamental role in our understanding of particle physics and sits at the high-energy frontier beyond which we expect new physics that supersedes the Standard Model (SM). In this review we summarize what we have learned so far from LHC data in this respect. In the absence of new particles having been discovered, we discuss how the scrutiny of the properties of the Higgs boson (in search for deviations from SM expectations) is crucial as it can point the way for physics beyond the SM. We also emphasize how the value of the Higgs mass could have far-reaching implications for the stability of the EW vacuum if there is no new physics up to extremely large energies.     

Tagged jets and jet reconstruction as a probe of the quark-gluon plasma

The large center-of-mass energies available to the heavy-ion program at the LHC and recent experimental advances at RHIC will enable QCD matter at very high temperatures and energy densities, that is, the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), to be probed in unprecedented ways. Fully-reconstructed inclusive jets and the away-side hadron showers associated with electroweak bosons, that is, tagged jets, are among these exciting new probes. Full jet reconstruction provides an experimental window into the mechanisms of quark and gluon dynamics in the QGP which is not accessible via leading particles and leading particle correlations. Theoretical advances in these exciting new fields of research can help resolve some of the most controversial points in heavy ion physics today such as the significance of the radiative, collisional and dissociative processes in the QGP and the applicability of strong versus weak coupling regimes to describe jet production and propagation. In this proceedings, I will present results on the production and subsequent suppression of high energy jets tagged with Z bosons in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and LHC energies using the Gyulassy-Levai-Vitev (GLV) parton energy loss approach.     

Large hadron collider physics program: Compact muon solenoid experiment

The LHC physics program at CERN addresses some of the fundamental issues in particle physics and CMS experiment would concentrate on them. The CMS detector is designed for the search of Standard Model Higgs boson in the whole possible mass range. Also it will be sensitive to Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric model and well adapted to searches for SUSY particles, new massive vector bosons, CP-violation in B-system, search for subtructure of quarks and leptons, etc. In the LHC heavy ion collisions the energy density would be well above the threshold for the possible formation of quark-gluon plasma.     

MoEDAL – a new light on the high-energy frontier

In 2010, the MoEDAL (MOnopole and Exotics Detector at the LHC) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was unanimously approved by European Centre for Nuclear Research’s Research Board to start data taking in 2015. MoEDAL is a pioneering experiment designed to search for highly ionising manifestations of new physics such as magnetic monopoles or massive (pseudo-)stable charged particles. Its groundbreaking physics programme defines a number of scenarios that yield potentially revolutionary insights into such foundational questions as: are there extra dimensions or new symmetries; does magnetic charge exist; what is the nature of dark matter; and, how did the Big Bang develop. MoEDAL’s purpose is to meet such far-reaching challenges at the frontier of the field. The innovative MoEDAL detector employs unconventional methodologies tuned to the prospect of discovery physics. The largely passive MoEDAL detector, deployed at Point 8 on the LHC ring, has a dual nature. First, it acts like a giant camera, comprised of nuclear track detectors – analysed offline by ultra fast scanning microscopes – sensitive only to new physics. Second, it is uniquely able to trap the particle messengers of physics beyond the Standard Model for further study. MoEDAL’s radiation environment is monitored by a state-of-the-art real-time TimePix pixel detector array. A new MoEDAL sub-detector designed to extend MoEDAL reach to mini-charged, minimally ionising particles is under study.     

Anomaly driven signatures of new invisible physics at the Large Hadron Collider

Many extensions of the Standard Model (SM) predict new neutral vector bosons at energies accessible by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We study an extension of the SM with new chiral fermions subject to non-trivial anomaly cancellations. If the new fermions have SM charges, but are too heavy to be created at LHC, and the SM fermions are not charged under the extra gauge field, one would expect that this new sector remains completely invisible at LHC. We show, however, that a non-trivial anomaly cancellation between the new heavy fermions may give rise to observable effects in the gauge boson sector that can be seen at the LHC and distinguished from backgrounds.     

From the LHC to future colliders

Discoveries at the LHC will soon set the physics agenda for future colliders. This report of a CERN Theory Institute includes the summaries of Working Groups that reviewed the physics goals and prospects of LHC running with 10 to 300 fb^?1 of integrated luminosity, of the proposed sLHC luminosity upgrade, of the ILC, of CLIC, of the LHeC and of a muon collider. The four Working Groups considered possible scenarios for the first 10 fb^?1 of data at the LHC in which (i) a state with properties that are compatible with a Higgs boson is discovered, (ii) no such state is discovered either because the Higgs properties are such that it is difficult to detect or because no Higgs boson exists, (iii) a missing-energy signal beyond the Standard Model is discovered as in some supersymmetric models, and (iv) some other exotic signature of new physics is discovered. In the contexts of these scenarios, the Working Groups reviewed the capabilities of the future colliders to study in more detail whatever new physics may be discovered by the LHC. Their reports provide the particle physics community with some tools for reviewing the scientific priorities for future colliders after the LHC produces its first harvest of new physics from multi-TeV collisions.     

Standard Model theory calculations and experimental tests

To present knowledge, all the physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can be described in the framework of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Indeed the newly discovered Higgs boson with a mass close to 125 GeV seems to confirm the predictions of the SM. Thus, besides looking for direct manifestations of the physics beyond the SM, one of the primary missions of the LHC is to perform ever more stringent tests of the SM. This requires not only improved theoretical developments to produce testable predictions and provide experiments with reliable event generators, but also sophisticated analyses techniques to overcome the formidable experimental environment of the LHC and perform precision measurements. The present article proposes an overview of the present theoretical tools and of the experimental results in the field of strong and electroweak interactions.     

Casimir effect at finite temperature for pure-photon sector of the minimal Standard Model Extension

Dynamics between particles is governed by Lorentz and CPT symmetry. There is a violation of Parity (P) and CP symmetry at low levels. The unified theory, that includes particle physics and quantum gravity, may be expected to be covariant with Lorentz and CPT symmetry. At high enough energies, will the unified theory display violation of any symmetry? The Standard Model Extension (SME), with Lorentz and CPT violating terms, has been suggested to include particle dynamics. The minimal SME in the pure photon sector is considered in order to calculate the Casimir effect at finite temperature.     

In search of elementary spin 0 particles

The Standard Model of strong and electroweak interactions uses point-like spin 1/2 particles as the building bricks of matter and point-like spin 1 particles as the force carriers. One of the most important questions to be answered by the present and future particle physics experiments is whether the elementary spin 0 particles exist, and if they do, what are their interactions with the spin 1/2 and spin 1 particles. Spin 0 particles have been searched extensively over the last decades. Several initial claims of their discoveries were finally disproved in the final experimental scrutiny process. The recent observation of the excess of events at the LHC in the final states involving a pair of vector bosons, or photons, is commonly interpreted as the discovery of the first elementary scalar particle, the Higgs boson. In this paper we recall examples of claims and subsequent disillusions in precedent searches spin 0 particles. We address the question if the LHC Higgs discovery can already be taken for granted, or, as it turned out important in the past, whether it requires a further experimental scrutiny before the existence of the first ever found elementary scalar particle is proven beyond any doubt. An example of the Double Drell–Yan process for which such a scrutiny is indispensable is discussed in some detail.     

Signals of new physics in global event properties in pp collisions in the TeV energy domain: rapidity intervals

The study of possible new physics signals in global event properties in pp collisions in the TeV energy domain is extended from full phase-space to rapidity intervals experimentally accessible at LHC. The elbow structure in the total multiplicity distribution predicted in full phase-space is clearly present also in restricted rapidity intervals, leading to very strong charged particle correlations. It is also found that energy densities comparable to those reached in heavy ion collisions at RHIC could be attained in pp collisions at LHC.Received: 3 March 2004, Published online: 23 July 2004     

SCYNet: testing supersymmetric models at the LHC with neural networks

SCYNet (SUSY Calculating Yield Net) is a tool for testing supersymmetric models against LHC data. It uses neural network regression for a fast evaluation of the profile likelihood ratio. Two neural network approaches have been developed: one network has been trained using the parameters of the 11-dimensional phenomenological Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (pMSSM-11) as an input and evaluates the corresponding profile likelihood ratio within milliseconds. It can thus be used in global pMSSM-11 fits without time penalty. In the second approach, the neural network has been trained using model-independent signature-related objects, such as energies and particle multiplicities, which were estimated from the parameters of a given new physics model.     

Elliptic flow from colour strings

It is shown that the elliptic flow can be successfully described in the colour string picture with fusion and percolation provided anisotropy of particle emission from the fused string is taken into account. Two possible sources of this anisotropy are considered, propagation of the string in the transverse plane and quenching of produced particles in the strong colour field of the string. Calculations show that the second source gives an overwhelming contribution to the flow at accessible energies. We obtain an almost equal elliptic flow dependence on p _T for the LHC and RHIC energies in agreement with the recent ALICE data.     

High transverse momentum physics at the large hadron collider

This note summarizes many detailed physics studies done by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations for the LHC, concentrating on processes involving the production of high mass states. These studies show that the LHC should be able to elucidate the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and to study a variety of other topics related to physics at the TeV scale. In particular, a Higgs boson with couplings given by the Standard Model is observable in several channels over the full range of allowed masses. Its mass and some of its couplings will be determined. If supersymmetry is relevant to electroweak interactions, it will be discovered and the properties of many supersymmetric particles elucidated. Other new physics, such as the existence of massive gauge bosons and extra dimensions can be searched for extending existing limits by an order of magnitude or more.     

Measuring hidden Higgs and strongly-interacting Higgs scenarios

Higgs couplings can be affected by physics beyond the Standard Model. We study modifications through interactions with a hidden sector and in specific composite Higgs models accessible at the LHC. Both scenarios give rise to congruent patterns of universal, or partially universal, shifts. In addition, Higgs decays to the hidden sector may lead to invisible decay modes which we also exploit. Experimental bounds on such potential modifications will measure the concordance of an observed Higgs boson with the Standard Model.     

Dark matter: Theory

The particle physics interpretation of the dark matter problem, which is intimately of cosmological and astrophysical nature, is going to be posed under deep scrutiny in the next years. From the particle physics side, accelerators like the LHC will deeply test theoretical ideas of new physics beyond the Standard Model, where particle candidates of dark matter are predicted to exist. From the astrophysical side, many probes are already providing a great deal of independent information on the foreseen signals which can be produced by the galactic or extra-galactic dark matter. In all this, cosmology plays a central role in determining the relevance and the basic properties of the particle dark matter candidate. The ultimate hope is the emergence of dark matter signals and the rise of a coherent picture of new physics from and at the crossing of particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. A very ambitious and farreaching project, which will bring to a deeper level our understanding of the fundamental laws which rule the Universe.     

Feasibility Studies of Charge Exchange Measurements in pp Collisions at the LHC

(1) Pions produced in the development of extended atmospheric cosmic ray air showers subsequently decay to muons. The measured yield of those muons is generally underestimated by current phenomenological models and event generators optimized for cosmic ray physics. The importance of those disagreements motivates the feasibility studies for testing these models at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies, at the highest center-of-mass energies achievable in a laboratory. The interaction of a nucleus and a virtual pion created in a charge exchange reaction at the LHC is a similar process to those contributing to the development of air showers in case of cosmic rays. The crucial problem of such an analysis is the selection of charge exchange events with the highest possible efficiency and high purity from proton–proton collisions at the LHC. (2) For this we consider distributions of various measurable quantities given by event generators commonly used in cosmic ray physics. (3) We examine the expected distributions of energy deposited in different calorimeters of an LHC experiment. We consider the geometrical acceptance and energy resolution of the detectors at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, as an example. We determine a working point cut from the various options for event selection, and compare signal and background predictions using different models for a representative simple observable, such as average transverse momentum or charge particle yield. (4) A set of event selection cuts along these considerations is proposed, with the aim of achieving optimal efficiency and purity.     

Search for top quark FCNC couplings in Z′ models at the LHC and CLIC

The top quark is the heaviest particle to date discovered, with a mass close to the electroweak symmetry breaking scale. It is expected that the top quark would be sensitive to the new physics at the TeV scale. One of the most important aspects of the top quark physics can be the investigation of the possible anomalous couplings. Here, we study the top quark flavor changing neutral current (FCNC) couplings via the extra gauge boson Z′ at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) energies. We calculate the total cross sections for the signal and the corresponding Standard Model (SM) background processes. For an FCNC mixing parameter x=0.2 and the sequential Z′ mass of 1 TeV, we find the single top quark FCNC production cross sections 0.38(1.76) fb at the LHC with $\sqrt{s_{pp}}=7(14)$ TeV, respectively. For the resonance production of sequential Z′ boson and decays to single top quark at the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) energies, including the initial state radiation and beamstrahlung effects, we find the cross section to be 27.96(0.91) fb at $\sqrt{s_{e^{+}e^{-}}}=1(3)$ TeV, respectively. We make the analysis to investigate the parameter space (mixing-mass) through various Z′ models. It is shown that the results benefit from the flavor tagging.     

The enigma of the highest energy particles of nature

Historically cosmic rays have always been at the intersection of astrophysics with particle physics. This is still and especially true in current days where experimenters routinely observe atmospheric showers from particles whose energies reach macroscopic values up to about 50 J. This dwarfs energies achieved in the laboratory by about eight orders of magnitude in the detector frame and three orders of magnitude in the center of mass. While the existence of these highest energy cosmic rays does not necessarily testify physics not yet discovered, their macroscopic energies likely links their origin to the most energetic processes in the Universe. Explanations range from conventional shock acceleration to particle physics beyond the Standard Model and processes taking place at the earliest moments of our Universe. While motivation for some of the more exotic scenarios may have diminished by newest data, conventional shock acceleration scenarios remain to be challenged by the apparent isotropy of cosmic ray arrival directions which may not be easy to reconcile with a highly structured and magnetized Universe. Fortunately, many new experimental activities promise a strong increase of statistics at the highest energies and a combination with γ-ray and neutrino astrophysics will put strong constraints on all these theoretical models. This short review is far from complete and instead presents a selection of aspects regarded by the author as interesting and/or promising for the future.