Physics Colloquium: Theoretical Physics with and for the LHC
Main content
With the discovery of a light Higgs boson, the LHC has firmly
established quantum field theory as the language of theoretical
particle physics. This affects current theoretical and experimental
particle physics in many ways. Now, we know that (effective) field
theory is the language we can rely on in performing analyses,
communicating results, and interpreting them. In addition, quantum
field theory allows us to firmly link many aspects of fundamental
physics, from the LHC to for example the Fermi space telescope. I will
explain how LHC physics has rapidly moved from a model-driven field to
a data-driven field, with an entirely new set of theory tasks. In
particular, we will see how theorists need to find a new balance
between data interpretation and the so-called big picture(s).
About the speaker
Tilman Plehn has been working on LHC physics since the last century. He started his career working on supersymmetry and Higgs physics at DESY. For his first postdoc he moved to the University of Wisconsin, to learn about Monte Carlo simulations in general and MadGraph in particular. After spending time at CERN and at MPI Munich he got his first permanent position in Edinburgh. Since 2008 he has been organizing the LHC theory group in Heidelberg. Two of his joint theoretical and experimental projects are SFitter, a parameter extraction tool, and the HEPTopTagger. Aside from such links between theory and experiment he is a big fan of QCD and of international structures in science.
