Conclusions from “Rencontres de Moriond QCD 2012”
Saturday 17 March was the last day of the Moriond QCD 2012 conference in La Thuile. Closing the week with an overview of the conference were Günther Dissertori from ETH Zurich, who gave the experimental summary talk, and Davison Soper from the University of Oregon, who reviewed the theoretical topics covered during the week.
“As the summary speakers, we were faced with the challenge of condensing, into two 45 minute presentations, the enormous amount of information presented by no less than 93 speakers during what was a highly interesting conference,” said Günther Dissertori.
In his talk, Dissertori pointed out the beautiful interplay between direct searches for new particles and indirect constraints coming from heavy flavour precision measurements. “Together, they really start to reduce strongly the parameter space still allowed for certain supersymmetric models,” said Dissertori. “Also bringing in the current constraints from the Higgs searches gives even further substance to this picture of cornering possible new physics beyond the Standard Model, accessible at the LHC energies.”
Regarding the recent results on Higgs searches, presented by ATLAS, CMS and the Tevatron experiments, both speakers emphasized that, while the deviations seen in the mass range from ~120-130 GeV might be called "tantalizing", the available statistics are not yet enough to allow too strong a conclusion to be made. As such, everybody is looking forward to the upcoming 8 TeV run at the LHC, which will help to shed light on this vital issue.
Dissertori concluded his talk with a photo of a puzzle, representing our current picture of physics up to the TeV scale, and stated that very soon we should get a better understanding if there is room for a piece in this puzzle called New Physics. Soper finished with the quote, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know...." (from 1 Corinthians 13, King James Bible), saying that for the Higgs boson and possible extensions of the standard model, the glass may be not so dark for Moriond 2013.
Finally, both speakers thanked and congratulated the conference organizers for a fantastic event (and the fantastic weather enjoyed by all the participants)!
For more about Moriond QCD 2012 visit the conference page to read presentations by all the speakers or read the daily CERN Bulletin reports of the conference:
- Uncertain signals from the Higgs boson
- Searches for Dark Matter, SUSY and other exotic particles
- Direct and indirect searches make the whole picture
- Probing the nature of heavy-ion collisions
- Clearing up for the Higgs
- Straight to the Top
