Understanding the structure of the proton at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper discusses the importance of understanding proton structure through quark and gluon arrangements for LHC physics, highlighting the limitations of current parton distribution functions and proposing observables less sensitive to these uncertainties for new physics searches.

Contribution

It demonstrates that certain observables can be used to probe new physics at the LHC with reduced dependence on uncertain parton distribution functions.

Findings

Identified observables less sensitive to PDF uncertainties.

Showed potential for improved new physics searches.

Highlighted the need for better proton structure understanding.

Abstract

Understanding the fundamental structure of matter requires an understanding of how quarks and gluons are assembled to form hadrons and of the structure of the protons which are the colliding particles at LHC. The arrangement of quarks and gluons inside nucleons can be probed by accelerating electrons, hadrons or nuclei to precisely controlled energies, smashing them into a target nucleus and examining in detail the final products. The LHC physics program is rich and has been widely described. It encompasses the searches for new particles up to masses of several TeV, including the elucidation of electroweak symmetry breaking and the possible observation of new symmetries at higher scales, and precision measurements of fundamental parameters in the electroweak and strong gauge sectors. Obviously, this program requires a precise understanding of the structure of the proton in terms of quarks and gluons, obtained from HERA and Tevatron. However, the knowledge on parton distribution functions (PDFs) is still limited for many aspects of LHC physics and the discovery potential is thus reduced. In this proceeding, we show on one example that it is possible to find some observables less sensitive to PDF uncertainties to probe with a high efficency new physics beyond the standard model.