Strongly coupled theories and LHC phenomenology

Abstract

The aim of this project is to study strongly interacting theories and their applications to physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) at the TeV scale. It is doubly motivated: on one side we have theoretical reasons to expect new physics at this scale, on the other this is the scale that soon will be tested at the Large Hadron Colider (LHC), that is already producing results. The idea is to investigate theories that explain the hierarchy between the eletroweak and the Plack scales. Special attention will be given to Randall-Sundrum models, inspired in the AdS/CFT (Anti-de Sitter / Conformal Field Theories) correspondence. The motivation behind this particular class of models is to study strongly coupled theories in 4 dimensions through their mapping into weakly coupled theories in 5 dimensions, allowing us to properly describe strongly coupled regimes in the TeV scale. Another advantage comes from the fact that these models also explain the fermion mass hierarchy. We will use Monte Carlo simulations to explore in detail the LHC phenomenology of the considered models. This approach can also be used to attack strongly coupled theories in other energy scales, with direct application to the study of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and the hadronic spectrum. (AU)