Higgs boson at the LHC: Addressing open questions inelementary particle physics

Abstract: The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, accelerates protons to the highest energies currently in operations. A tiny fraction of the collisions, about ten in a trillion, involve the interactions of weak force quanta residing inside the protons. I will discuss how such interactions produce the recently discovered Higgs boson, and how it may serve as a portal to unknown sectors of elementary particles, such as dark matter. I will also describe the technical challenges of saving such minuscule fractions of weak force collisions, including the use of artificial intelligence in real-time trigger systems.