The quest for new physics with the Physics Beyond Colliders programme

摘要

In recent years, interest in complementary methods to high-energy-frontier colliders to investigate the physics of elementary particles and forces has grown. This development is driven by the so-far negative results of searches for new particles with high masses at the Large Hadron Collider, and by theoretical attempts to account for neutrino masses and to solve cosmological puzzles such as dark matter, dark energy and the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. Traditionally, CERN has hosted a wealth of accelerator and non-accelerator projects below the high-energy frontier, in which more than a thousand physicists are currently involved. The Physics Beyond Colliders (PBC) study was launched three years ago to explore the future of this field. Here we give an overview of the various PBC proposals, ranging from explorations of the dark sector to precision measurements of strongly interacting processes. The methodology employed to compare the reach of those projects - based on a set of common benchmark models - has raised interest in the collider, neutrino and non-accelerator communities and may provide a comprehensive overview of how the parameter range for physics beyond the Standard Model should be explored in the worldwide context.