Perspectives of LHCP2017

More than 450 physicists from around the world visited Shanghai to hear the latest LHC results, at the fifth annual Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP17) conference. This year, the LHC experiments presented an interesting set of new results exploiting the high statistics of the combined 2015 and 2016 dataset.

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The conference program included a detailed review of the latest experimental and theoretical results on collider physics, particularly the most recent results of the LHC Run II. Moreover, it triggered stimulating discussions on further research directions within the high energy particle physics community including both theory and experiment sides.

Since the discovery of Higgs by ATLAS and CMS in 2012 – a huge success for the Standard Model of particle physics – people have been looking for new physics everywhere: from dark matter to supersymmetry, from rare decays to abnormal excesses. With the LHC’s increased center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, as well as more advanced analysis techniques, new limits based on precision measurements and new searches have been set to almost all of the frontiers of new physics searches. Although there are tantalizing hints, no new phenomenon or particles have been found yet.

However, as Prof. Nima Arkani-Hammed mentioned during an inspiring panel discussion – which included a group of distinguished scientists, including Eckhard Elsen, Luciano Maiani and Yifang Wang – particle physics has never been just about looking for new particles. Instead, it's about the laws of nature, which include the interactions between the particles and their properties that build the foundation of the world. In that sense, we shouldn't be discouraged by null results from new particle searches. The High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC will lead us to a new era of searches because of the humongous amount of data expected. Just like going up to the highest level of a beautiful oriental tower, there is always something new to look for, always new scenery to amaze.

Moreover, a thorough understanding of the detector is required to obtain precise physics measurements using the full statistics of the large Run 2 dataset as well as for the future luminosity upgrade of the LHC.

Overall, LHCP17 conference was a very stimulating conference offering space for scientific exchanges. The success of the LHCP conference demonstrated that the LHC experiments are just beginning to harvest the fascinating physics opportunities provided with the large Run 2 dataset. With this year's data-taking just beginning, there will be many more interesting results still to come.