Speaker: Prof. Benjamin Allanach (DAMTP)
Venue: Winstanley Lecture Theatre
Time: 17/11/2014 20:30, drinks from 20:15

The Large Hadron Collider is about to start operation again at a higher energy at the beginning of 2015. I shall introduce the machine, particle physics and the discovery of the Higgs boson. Standard theory predicts that the quantum fluctuations should make the Higgs boson much heavier than it is observed to be, but a speculative theory of particle physics (supersymmetry) explains why the quantum fluctuations are small. This theory predicts a host of new particles for the LHC to find. There were a few small anomalies in LHC data already that can be interpreted as the production of certain supersymmetric particles. Such interpretations are ready for further experimental testing next year.