ABSTRACT

The central successes and puzzles of particle physics will be reviewed, the discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) illustrating both aspects. The grand principle of Naturalness will be introduced as the dominant organizing principle behind many searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model. The challenging task of testing naturalness will be summarized, especially the interplay between deep theoretical ideas, such as Supersymmetry, Compositeness, Extra Dimensions and Hidden Naturalness, and experimental strategies at the LHC and even more powerful future colliders. The LHC is beginning its second phase of operations, at significantly higher energies than before, and this talk will give a satellite view of the big issues at stake in the coming years.

About the Speaker:

Raman Sundrum is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, working in theoretical particle physics, and he is the Director of the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics. He obtained his PhD from Yale University in 1990, after which he did postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley, Harvard, Boston University and Stanford, before joining the physics faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2000. He moved to his current position at Maryland in 2010. He is best known for co-authoring the "Randall-Sundrum" scenario for particle physics based on "warped" higher-dimensional spacetime. It has led to many developments in particle theory, string theory, and gravity theory, and it has inspired a number of experimental searches at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Dr. Sundrum also works on Supersymmetry, cosmology, and quantum field theory.