Abstract:

The first run of the Large Hadron Collider was an unequivocal success. Its marquee result, the Higgs Boson discovery, completed the Standard Model of fundamental particle interactions. However, the particle physics community expects that the era of discovery for the LHC is just beginning. In this talk I will discuss the post-Higgs discovery landscape, explain why LHC physicists are so excited about the physics prospects of a 14 TeV LHC, and present a detector upgrade, the Atlas Fast Tracker, which will improve the ATLAS experiment’s ability to record collisions which might contain new physics. In particular, I will focus on the role of heavy fermions which are critical to the understanding of the Higgs Boson and also play a prominent role in many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model.