For the past half a century, high energy physics has enjoyed the uninterrupted success of discoveries, signified by the recent discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Our understanding of the microscopic world has been deepened to a scale as short as 10-9 nm. Yet there are still many outstanding questions to be answered. In this lecture, the speaker will first review the historical discoveries in the past half a century, and then contemplate on the profound questions that still puzzle the high energy physics world, especially those associated with the Higgs physics, including the nature of the electroweak phase transition, stability of the electroweak scale, the possible connection with dark matter, and the potential impact on the early universe cosmology. The speaker argues that the collective efforts of future high energy physics programs, in particular the future colliders, hold great promise to uncover the laws of nature to a deeper level.
About the speaker
Prof. Han Tao received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1990. He carried out his postdoctoral research at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and joined the University of California, Davis in 1993 as an Assistant Professor. In 1997, he was appointed as an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 2011 as a Professor. He is currently the Distinguished Professor of High Energy Physics there and also the Director of the Pittsburgh Particle Physics Astrophysics and Cosmology Center.
Prof. Han’s research interest is in the elementary particle physics theory, focusing on high energy collider physics and in connection to astro-particle physics and cosmology. He formulates theoretical models of elementary particles and their interactions, and develop strategies to test the theory by experiments and observations. The research direction, bridging the abstract theory and experimental observation, is the field of Phenomenology.
Prof. Han was named the Qian-Ren (1000-Talents) Professorship by the Tsinghua University (2012) and Chang-Jiang Professorship by the Chinese Ministry of Education (2004). He was also elected a Member of High Energy Physics Advisory Panel for US Department of Energy and US National Science Foundation, a Frontier Fellow of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (2004) and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (2003).
For attendees’ attention
Light refreshments will be served from 3:40 to 4:10 pm.
