The Hidden Geometry of Particle Collisions

ABSTRACT
In this talk, I explain how various concepts and techniques in quantum field theory and collider physics can be naturally translated into a new geometric language. Using the energy mover's distance, which quantifies the minimal amount of "work" required to rearrange one event into another, we can define a distance between pairs of collider events. This distance can then be used to triangulate the "space" of collider events and rigorously define various geometric objects. Many well-known collider observables, jet algorithms, and pileup mitigation schemes have a simple geometric interpretation, as does the important concept of infrared and collinear safety. Intriguingly, these ideas can be lifted from a distance between events into a distance between theories, with potential relevance for visualizing and interpreting data from the LHC.
BIO
Jesse Thaler is a theoretical particle physicist who is an associate professor at MIT. He obtained his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2006, and after being a Miller Fellow at the University of California in Berkeley he joined the MIT faculty in 2010. Starting from 2020, he became the inaugural Director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions. He is an expert in jets, which are collimated sprays of particles produced at colliders, and he has made outstanding contributions towards understanding their substructure. Besides his research on collider physics, he is also interested in theoretical frameworks beyond the standard model of particle physics and new strategies to probe the nature of dark matter.

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Q&A