About this Research Topic
Particle Physics is a vast and active research field of contemporary theoretical and experimental physics. Measurements made at microscopic distances have started to confront the most fundamental principles of nature encoded in the structure of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. With recent observations of accelerated expansion of the universe, massive dark haloes filled with invisible matter and persistent flavour physics anomalies, the Standard Model enters the period of the most severe phenomenological tests that might eventually lead to a revision of our current understanding of fundamental properties of matter, interactions and even spacetime.
While the LHC experiments access fundamental interactions at the energy and intensity frontiers without notable discoveries so far, the demand for precision measurements increases. Already now, we are familiar with persistent inconsistencies within the Standard Model framework such as incapability of dark matter (and dark energy) description, not accounting for a sufficient CP violation required for generation of baryon asymmetry, yet-to-be resolved hierarchy problem in the Higgs sector as well as a lack of dynamical mechanism for natural generation of very specific observed patterns in fermion mass and mixing parameters. For instance, there is a substantial lack of first-principle understanding of the Higgs sector properties and the origin of the electroweak scale, origins of quark-lepton families, unique neutrino features as well as strong unexplained hierarchies in lepton and quark sectors of the Standard Model. The non-observation of New Physics in collider measurements remains puzzling and raises further questions to their discovery potential, methodology, precision and sensitivity to weak signals. On the other hand, with a wealth of new phenomenological information emerging from neutrino oscillation studies, astroparticle physics measurements and, since recently, gravitational wave astrophysics, should we expect the Standard Model to remain the baseline framework of Particle Physics, or should it be eventually replaced by a more accurate and complete theory of the building blocks and symmetries of nature? What kind of New Physics one may expect to show up and in which particular way?
This Research Topic "Phenomena Beyond the Standard Model: What do we expect for New Physics to look like?" is devoted to the state-of-the-art theoretical research at forefront of Particle Physics aiming at exploring these most fundamental questions of nature.
While the LHC experiments access fundamental interactions at the energy and intensity frontiers without notable discoveries so far, the demand for precision measurements increases. Already now, we are familiar with persistent inconsistencies within the Standard Model framework such as incapability of dark matter (and dark energy) description, not accounting for a sufficient CP violation required for generation of baryon asymmetry, yet-to-be resolved hierarchy problem in the Higgs sector as well as a lack of dynamical mechanism for natural generation of very specific observed patterns in fermion mass and mixing parameters. For instance, there is a substantial lack of first-principle understanding of the Higgs sector properties and the origin of the electroweak scale, origins of quark-lepton families, unique neutrino features as well as strong unexplained hierarchies in lepton and quark sectors of the Standard Model. The non-observation of New Physics in collider measurements remains puzzling and raises further questions to their discovery potential, methodology, precision and sensitivity to weak signals. On the other hand, with a wealth of new phenomenological information emerging from neutrino oscillation studies, astroparticle physics measurements and, since recently, gravitational wave astrophysics, should we expect the Standard Model to remain the baseline framework of Particle Physics, or should it be eventually replaced by a more accurate and complete theory of the building blocks and symmetries of nature? What kind of New Physics one may expect to show up and in which particular way?
This Research Topic "Phenomena Beyond the Standard Model: What do we expect for New Physics to look like?" is devoted to the state-of-the-art theoretical research at forefront of Particle Physics aiming at exploring these most fundamental questions of nature.
Keywords: Higgs physics, Grand Unified Theories, Dark Matter, Baryogenesis, Cosmic Inflation
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