Experimental Challenges for the LHC Run II

Coordinators: Claudio Campagnari, Monica D'Onofrio, Fabiola Gianotti, Ian Hinchliffe, and Joe Incandela

LHC Run I brought a Higgs boson discovery, a large array of high precision Standard Model (SM) results, and the exclusion of vast ranges of newly accessible Beyond Standard Model parameter spaces in proton-proton collisions.  The absence of new physics that could help address the gauge hierarchy and other problems has created a number of new questions and concerns. LHC Run II at 13 TeV will open up important regions of phase space.  After there has been a first, fairly comprehensive look at the 13 TeV data, the LHC experimental community will be in a good position to review where things stand and work with the theory community to establish the best ideas for how to proceed. This KITP program is designed specically to contribute to this process.

The program will combine LHC experimentalists, contributing their knowledge of the data, with members of the theory community, contributing their ideas, to understand what are the best avenues to pursue in the remainder of Run II and beyond. Major involvement of experimentalists in the organization of the program maintains a clear connection to what is realistically possible, given existing detectors and triggers, and to establishing the priorities of the physics program.

The structure of the program will be based on four periods of two weeks. The first periods will cover the four traditional experimental physics areas: Standard Model, Higgs, SUSY, and Exotic. The latter periods would include electroweak and QCD studies, heavy flavors, top, and forward physics. A final session would entail one week devoted to the Conference associated with the parallel KITP Program "LHC Run II and the Precision Frontier" and a final week on future accelerators.