Prof. Paris Sphica
CERN & Unviersity of Athens
The high-energy frontier has traditionally had one primary goal, to probe directly any uncharted physics waters. This has translated into a gigantic effort to complete the unobserved elements of the Standard Model of particle physics as well as to search for for signs of physics beyond. The past year witnessed the long-awaited first high-energy run at the CERN LHC, which delivered proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The data collected in 2010 have allowed the LHC experiments to complete the commissioning of the detectors and to perform early measurements of key standard model processes. The inclusive production of particles, jets and photons, the observation of the W and Z bosons and the measurement of their production and decay properties, along with the observation of the top-quark, constitute a full set of measurements which establish our understanding of Standard Model processes in this new high-energy regime. These measurements form a solid base from which searches for physics beyond the standard model have been launched. Searches for supersymmetry and several signatures of possible new exotic physics phenomena have been developed, and new parameter space is being explored. Meanwhile, the Tevatron, with its excellent performance and the well-tuned detectors continues its impressive production of physics results. The lecture will review the list of physics achievements from 2010 and consider briefly what 2011 may bring.
Wednesday, May 11 at 4:30 PM
Room LR3, Technological Institute