Beyond the Standard Model: An overview

TL;DR

This paper reviews the limitations of the Standard Model and explores promising new physics solutions like SUSY, axions, and string theory, highlighting recent theoretical insights and potential experimental search strategies.

Contribution

It provides a re-evaluation of electroweak finetuning in SUSY, discusses string theory predictions, and suggests new LHC search channels for light higgsinos.

Findings

Naturalness bounds on Higgsino-like LSP beyond LHC limits

String theory predicts m_h ~ 125 GeV with heavy sparticles

Light higgsino pair production as promising LHC search channel

Abstract

At present, the Standard Model (SM) agrees with almost all collider data. Yet, three finetuning issues -- the Higgs mass problem, the strong CP problem and the cosmological constant problem -- all call for new physics. The most plausible solutions at present are weak scale SUSY, the PQWW axion and the string landscape. A re-evaluation of EW finetuning in SUSY allows for a higgsino-like LSP and naturalness upper bounds well beyond LHC limits. Rather general arguments from string theory allow for statistical predictions that m_h~ 125 GeV with sparticles beyond present LHC limits. The most lucrative LHC search channel may be for light higgsino pair production. Dark matter turns out to be a SUSY DFSZ axion along with a diminished abundance of higgsino-like WIMPs.