EPS-HEP2019 report
From 10 to 17 July 2019, nearly 750 physicists attended the 2019 European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics (EPSHEP2019) in the charming city of Ghent, in Belgium.
An intense first half of the conference with over 500 parallel talks, and two dedicated poster sessions later on featuring about 200 contributions, immersed the participants in detailed discussions on all relevant topics in the field, from top quark and Higgs boson measurements, to searches for dark matter and exotic physics to latest developments in string theory and detector and accelerator R&D.
The plenary sessions in the second part of the event kicked off with the EPS Prize ceremony of the High-Energy and Particle Physics division, where among others the discovery of the top quark (CDF and D0 Collaborations) and the high-precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background (WMAP and Planck Collaborations) were honored. Following was a series of about 40 invited plenary talks, each providing an overview of a specific experiment or research field. While the large LHC experiments presented a wealth of impressive Higgs boson results, electroweak measurements involving vector bosons and top quarks, searches for supersymmetry and exotic physics, also the theory side showed latest progress with increasingly sophisticated SM calculations and new viewpoints on BSM physics, especially in the Higgs sector with perspectives to probe Higgs boson couplings in observables without Higgs bosons. With the latest data on e.g. CP violation, newly discovered states, rare B decays from LHCb, BESIII and now also Belle-II, flavour physics currently seems to be the most promising new physics probe. While the LIGO/VIRGO experiments have marked the birth of multimessenger astronomy, also multimessenger astroparticle physics is booming with e.g. combined data from IceCube, MAGIC and several observatories yielding first evidence for a blazar being a non-stellar neutrino source. In addition, the rich fields of neutrino physics, the ongoing quest for understanding dark matter, and the study of quark-gluon plasma states in heavy ion physics were reviewed in detail. On the technological side, while the development of new detection systems is now driven by issues such as ever increasing particle rates, high resolution requirements, radiation damage, higher sensitivity for feeble signals and improved background control, it seems clear that accelerator research will need to focus on new ways to reach ever higher energies.
The focus of a special common session between the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) and EPS was on the ongoing update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. Options and challenges were discussed for future accelerators, detectors and computing infrastructure, highlighting also the need to focus on education and recognition of technology-oriented physicists.
The EPSHEP2019 participants could also enjoy a rich social program, including a most popular Belgian beer seminar and tasting event, a science-and-music concert, and a screening of the The Most Unknown documentary film. About 500 people attended the Cool Physics Day public event that featured virtual visits with live connections to the VIRGO and the CMS experiments, a spectacular physics-on-stage show, and an educational and hands-on science exhibition.
The intense week of discussions in Ghent was a great success. Note in your agenda the next edition of the conference, EPSHEP2021, which will happen in Hamburg from 21 to 28 July 2021!
