Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal was recently invited to co-convene a three-week workshop at the Hong Kong Institute of Science and Technology, titled "The Future of High Energy Physics." The workshop was hosted by the Institute of Advanced Study at HKUST. The theme of the workshop was the energy frontier in particle physics. After the discovery of the Higgs boson, the priorities at the energy frontier are the precise measurement of Higgs properties and searches for new physics. The existence of dark matter and the excess of matter over antimatter in the universe cannot be explained or accommodated in the Standard Model. Furthermore, the Higgs boson, being the first fundamental scalar particle ever discovered in all of physics, has bizarre properties in quantum field theory. The investigation of these big questions strongly motivates the construction of an electron-positron Higgs factory and a new proton-proton collider with energy significantly higher than the LHC. These options and proposals from China and CERN were discussed at the workshop. Prof. Kotwal also gave an introductory plenary talk on experimental issues at a future proton-proton collider.
Department of Physics
