Colloquia

The very successful Run I of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) culminated in the discovery of the Higgs boson which was the subject of the 2013 Nobel Prize.

How will we know if there are other "undiscovered" particles in the data? (And, was there a hint from CERN last month???)  This will require improved calculations, and the key ingredients are:

i) higher-order theoretical cross section calculations, and

ii) precise Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) that characterize the proton structure.

Surprisingly, these predictions are influenced by a wide range of data including precision low-energy nuclear results. Recent theoretical developments improve our ability to address the QCD multi-scale problem and higher orders across the full kinematic range.

We look at some of the topics, puzzles, and challenges that lie on the horizon, and identify areas where additional efforts are required.