Anticipating Physics at the LHC
Coordinators: Csaba Csaki, Tao Han, JoAnne Hewett, James Wells
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will begin operation in 2008. The 14 TeV center-of-mass energies produced by the proton-proton collisions at the LHC will probe a new energy frontier, which promises to help answer many outstanding questions in fundamental physics.
One of the most pressing questions is the origin of electroweak symmetry breaking, and more broadly the origin of elementary particle masses. As the LHC will scatter partons at energies well above the elementary particle masses, we expect the dynamics at the source of mass generation to become apparent. We further expect that the mechanism by which the weak scale is stabilized will manifest itself in the careful searches for new particles and interactions at the TeV scale. Other fundamental questions are at stake during the LHC era, such as the nature of dark matter, origin of the baryon asymmetry, sources of CP violation, and the organizing principles for flavor physics.
The primary goal of this conference is to focus on what can be learned from LHC experiments -- how theories map to LHC observables and vice versa. This conference will bring together experts in TeV-scale model-building and beyond the Standard Model phenomenology, with special emphasis on implications for LHC physics.