Particle theory

Abstract:

Particle physics is sometimes described as going through a crisis, notably because of the continued lack of discovery of physics beyond the Standard Model, despite the LHC having operated at close to maximal energy for some years now. Here, I argue that we should not underestimate the significance of recent progress and future prospects in the Higgs sector of the Standard Model. This is especially the case for the Yukawa interactions and the structure of the Higgs potential, both of which are unlike any sector that has been established and stress-tested before in particle physics. Other topics that I touch on include the still substantial scope for increasing the reach of searches at LHC, the increasing role of precision in hadron-collider physics and the rich interplay that is developing between heavy-ion and proton-proton physics.