Wednesday 22 April 2015 

Speaker: Juan Rojo (Oxford University)


Title: "The structure of the proton in the Higgs Boson era" 

Abstract: The accurate determination of the internal structure of the proton, 
quantified by the so-called Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) is a crucial 
ingredient for the physics program of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). PDFs 
are one of the most important sources of theoretical uncertainty in the 
predictions  for Higgs boson production, degrading the accuracy of its 
characterization in terms of couplings, they induce very large uncertainties 
for high-mass New Physics particle  production and they substantially affect 
precision SM measurements such as the mass of the W boson and the effective 
lepton mixing angle. For these reasons, an active program towards better PDFs 
is being carried out by different groups, based on using new experimental 
inputs, more accurate theoretical calculations and on improving the fitting 
methodology. In this talk I review the motivations for precision phenomenology 
at the LHC and in particular the need for next-generation PDF sets to meet 
the requirements of the upcoming Run II data taking period, focusing on 
recent developments of the NNPDF global fit effort.