LHC Inverse Workshop

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With the imminent start of the LHC in 2007 particle physics is on the threshold of its most exciting period in over three decades. The physics of the TeV scale will begin to be uncovered, and whatever is found will have profound implications for fundamental physics. Over the past two decades many models of weak scale physics have been proposed. It is clear that the era of poorly-constrained speculation and model-building is nearing an end. It is unlikely that building more models exploring variations on the mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking is particularly important now, unless some qualitatively new ideas and associated signals are involved.

Instead, there is another problem, far more urgent especially as the LHC draws near, that has received less attention. How will we unambiguously determine the underlying new physics from LHC data, once the existence of a signal is established? Suppose we become confident supersymmetry has been discovered – can we determine even qualitative features of the spectrum? Can we, for instance, tell even roughly whether or not the gaugino masses are consistent with unification at the scale where the gauge couplings unify? Whether the LSP can account for the dark matter?

Little systematic work has been done on this "inverse problem". Most collider phenomenology has been done in the "forward" direction, from the parameter space to the signatures. Often the signals are from very special models, chosen to have far fewer parameters than the general theory. Such studies were appropriate, with the hope that we would gain familiarity with the associated signals and be able to recognize them if they arise at LHC.

But the LHC inverse problem is much more interesting and important. We can split it into 3 categories:

LHC-1A - What is the new physics?

LHC-1B - What is the spectrum and effective Lagrangian of the new physics at the weak scale?

LHC-1C - How can we begin to study what the underlying theory is, perhaps at a high scale and/or in extra dimensions?

We think it is important to make progress with the LHC-1 problem now, rather than waiting. To help do that we plan to have a series of Harvard-Michigan meetings on the LHC-1 problem. The first will be at the University of Michigan, organized by the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, April 12-15, 2006. Everyone is welcome to attend. Please let us know if you are interested in reporting on some relevant research. We plan to focus narrowly, so we expect to only schedule talks relevant to data likely to be available in the next few years.

By late-January a web site will be up, on the MCTP site (www.umich.edu/~mctp/), from which participants can register, arrange accommodations, and obtain travel information. A limited amount of funds will be available to support some participants. Please share this message with any interested people.

Nima Arkani-Hamed
Gordy Kane

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