Unknown unknowns and Known unknowns in the SMEFT

by Dr Michael Trott (NBI, Copenhagen )

Thursday 24 Jan 2019, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/London

In recent years the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) has emerged as a well defined and systematically improvable theory to study the constraints on physics beyond the Standard Model. This formalism explains old mysteries in interpreting LEP data and offers a field theory framework to combine such data with LHC measurements of the properties of the Higgs. We discuss the current status of these combined studies. The lack of evidence for new physics resonances at LHC has also encouraged new approaches to explaining the observed value of the electroweak scale, in the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model. One such approach is the Neutrino Option, that generates the electroweak scale from an underlying Majorana scale, when Neutrino masses come about due to a seesaw mechanism. We discuss how this approach is embedded into the SMEFT.