Simulation of new physics at the LHC

by Bryan Webber (Cambridge University)

Friday 15 Jul 2005, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

TH Auditorium (CERN)

If (when?) new physics is observed at the LHC, how will we know what it is? To answer this question we need computer simulations of complete events (event generators) that experimenters can use to estimate their sensitivity to the differences between alternative theoretical models, and to the parame-ters of those models. I shall present results of two recent studies of this type based on the HERWIG event generator. In the first, we look at the production and decay of black holes in TeV-scale gravity theories. How well could the mass and temperature of such objects be measured, and could these be used to infer the number of extra dimensions? In the second, we ask whether spin correlations in new particle decays could be used to distinguish between supersymmetry and universal extra dimensions.