Top and Higgs physics in the precision LHC era

Measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have explored and constrained a range of ultraviolet (UV) completions of the Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics. At the present stage of the LHC programme it is fair to say that unless new light, beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics is hiding in experimentally challenging signatures, it is either weakly coupled to the SM or there is a considerable mass gap between the SM and the BSM spectra. The latter avenue has motivated largely model-independent approaches based on effective field theory (EFT) techniques recently. In case the SM's UV completion is both weakly coupled and scale separated to the extent that modifications of the low-energy SM lagrangian become non-resolvable in the light of expected theoretical and experimental limitations, the EFT approach will become as challenged as measurements in the full model context that the EFT tries to approximate. If, on the other hand, new physics is actually strongly coupled at larger scales, EFT-based methods are suitable tools in capturing the UV completions' dynamics and symmetry. Prime examples of such theories are models with strong electroweak symmetry breaking, which a theoretically attractive avenues to address the Hierarchy problem. This project aims at the development of advanced analysis strategies (including machine learning) to enhance and exploit the sensitivity of expected LHC EFT constraints and contextualise them in SM extensions that predict modifications of the Higgs and top quark sectors. The project will cover perturbative and non-perturbative extensions and will provide new precision insights into the relevance of Higgs and top quark measurements at present and future collider experiments in close relation to complementary constraints from astrophysics and cosmology.