Higgs boson at the LHC: Addressing open questions inelementary particle physics

Abstract: The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Geneva,Switzerland, accelerates protons to the highest energies currently inoperations. A tiny fraction of the collisions, about ten in a trillion, involvethe interactions of weak force quanta residing inside the protons. I willdiscuss how such interactions produce the recently discovered Higgs boson, andhow it may serve as a portal to unknown sectors of elementary particles, suchas dark matter. I will also describe the technical challenges of saving suchminuscule fractions of weak force collisions, including the use of artificialintelligence in real-time trigger systems.