The Case for Jet Substructure

Jesse Thaler, Assistant Professor of Physics, Class of 1943 Career Development Professor, MIT



Collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are dominated by jets, collimated sprays of hadrons that are proxies for short-distance quarks and gluons. With the remarkable performance of the ATLAS and CMS detectors, jets can now be characterized not just by their overall direction and energy but also by their substructure. In this talk, I highlight the ways that jet substructure can enhance the search for new physics at the LHC, especially at higher energies and luminosities. I also explain how theoretical studies of jet substructure have taught us surprising lessons about QCD.