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.