CERN/LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN probes the basic laws governing the interactions among elementary particles and offers the widest range of physics opportunities in the exploration of unprecedented energy regimes. The discovery of a Higgs boson-like particle in 2012 marks the end of a decades-long search and has fortified the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics as the best description of nature at the fundamental level. At the same time, the SM is known to be theoretically incomplete and can therefore be considered valid only in a limited range of energies. However, striking signals of physics beyond the SM still remain absent to date. Elusive new-physics phenomena are therefore likely hiding in small and subtle effects, which need to be pinned down through detailed studies that confront the experimental data with theoretical predictions. Precision measurements of so-called "standard-candle processes" as well as the determination of the properties of the Higgs boson are therefore among the highest priorities of the LHC programme and possible future colliders. Such studies, however, critically rely on our ability to predict both signal and background processes with high precision. Possible PhD projects will focus on precision calculations within the SM and their phenomenological applications and will be closely aligned with the physics programme of the LHC and possible future colliders. Those projects requite the application and development of analytical and numerical techniques, as well as the use of high-performance computing resources. The Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP) in Durham, has an outstanding expertise in the theoretical aspects of physics beyond the Standard Model and on its phenomenological signatures and it is an ideal place for this ambitious project