The Standard Model: How far can it go and how can we tell?

TL;DR

This paper reviews the successes and limitations of the Standard Model of particle physics, highlighting recent experimental discoveries like the Higgs boson and discussing future challenges and potential extensions beyond current energy scales.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the Standard Model's achievements and explores the implications of new experimental and theoretical developments challenging its completeness.

Findings

Successful prediction of the Higgs boson in 2012

Advances in calculational techniques and experiments

Challenges to the Standard Model at higher energies

Abstract

The Standard Model of particle physics encapsulates our current best understanding of physics at the smallest distances and highest energies. It incorporates Quantum Electrodynamics (the quantised version of Maxwell's electromagnetism) and the weak and strong interactions, and has survived unmodified for decades, save for the inclusion of non-zero neutrino masses after the observation of neutrino oscillations in the late 1990s. It describes a vast array of data over a wide range of energy scales. I review a selection of these successes, including the remarkably successful prediction of a new scalar boson, a qualitatively new kind of object observed in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider. New calculational techniques and experimental advances challenge the Standard Model across an ever-wider range of phenomena, now extending significantly above the electroweak symmetry breaking scale. I will outline some of the consequences of these new challenges, and briefly discuss what is still to be found.