The Standard Model and Beyond

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Currently, our understanding of Nature at the most fundamental level is at the crossroads. This year, the LHC at CERN will collide protons at higher energies than ever before, sufficient to explore physics in depth at the TeV scale. Nobody yet knows what these data will reveal. However, there are very good reasons to believe that something fundamentally new will be discovered, which might transform our understanding of basic physics, making the next few years the most exciting time for a generation or more. The discoveries could be new types of particle, such as the Higgs boson, new kinds of symmetries such as supersymmetry, or indeed something even more dramatic such as extra dimensions. Our rolling programme of research in Particle Physics Theory at the University of Edinburgh is designed to be at the forefront of these new discoveries: indeed Peter Higgs himself is Emeritus Professor here. Specifically, we provide theoretical calculations, using pen and paper, and the most powerful supercomputers, of both the huge number of background processes to be seen at LHC due to known physics, and the tiny signals expected in various models of new physics, in order to discriminate between signal and background, and thus maximise the discovery potential of the LHC. In parallel, we will attempt to understand the more complete picture of all the forces of Nature that should begin to emerge, in our ultimate quest for a Theory of Everything.