Colloquium: (4.30pm)
Dark Matter in Collision at the LHC
John Paul Chou (Rutgers University)
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has ushered in a new
era in fundamental physics, in which proton-proton collisions of unprecedented
quality and quantity are recorded at the highest energies ever obtained in a
lab. In 2012, the CMS and ATLAS
experiments discovered the Higgs boson, completing the picture of the Standard
Model of particle physics. Where
else will this new era take us?
Dark matter, seen astronomically through its gravitational effects, has
a natural particle interpretation and should be
observable at the LHC. But this simple
story may have unexpected twists and turns. I will discuss the different ways that
dark matter and related particles could manifest at the LHC and what unexpected
secrets may lie in store for the future.