Orphans of Naturalness: A Tale of Beauty and Darkness

by Nicola Serra (University of Zurich)

Tuesday 4 Jul 2023, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Berlin

ENC-D308

The groundbreaking runs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have profoundly influenced the domain of particle physics. There exist minor discrepancies from Standard Model predictions in b-hadron decays that may herald new physics. Yet, even as these flavour anomalies warrant comprehensive investigation and the potential for novel particle discovery remains with the high-luminosity LHC, the direct evidence of new physics surprisingly continues to elude us. This apparent absence of new physics is a provocative puzzle, challenging our understanding of the hierarchy problem and naturalness. In response to this puzzle, a compelling hypothesis emerges: some of the pressing problems of the Standard Model could be addressed at low energy by feebly interacting particles. As one of the 'orphans of naturalness,' I plan to present a straightforward narrative of my recent research work. I will provide a succinct overview of the current findings and the future potential of the flavour anomalies at LHCb, and then transition to a focus on the Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP) experiment at CERN, discussing the development of the experiment and its potential to impact our understanding of the field.