CA15108 - Connecting insights in fundamental physics (FUNDAMENTALCONNECTIONS)

The coming years will be crucial for High Energy Physics, which currently stands at a crossroads. For example the next run of the LHC is about to tackle a multitude of urgent questions. Chief among these are the nature of electro-weak symmetry breaking, and the properties of the Higgs particle, which is central to the whole enterprise. The properties of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector remain very nebulous, and yet there is no doubt their influence is crucial in many areas of physics such as flavor structure and neutrino physics, early Universe cosmology, dark-matter, baryogenesis, CP violation.

These areas comprise the current frontiers of human knowledge, and there is high expectation that they will be significantly pushed back by anticipated experiments, including the upgraded LHC. The Action aims to meet this challenge with an ambitious and global range of works, focussed on connecting the insights that will undoubtedly be gained in all these areas, and greatly strengthening the interaction between collider physics, flavor and neutrino physics, astro-particle physics and cosmology. It will provide a platform to exploit the latest experimental results not only from the LHC, but also from a host of new facilities. At the same time the insights gained will be used to inform and guide theoretical endeavors, and address the most pressing questions surrounding the electro-weak sector, including its puzzling apparent stability, the huge hierarchies between mass scales, the origin of flavour structure and the origin of dark matter.