Speaker
Description
The successful operation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has opened up a new era of exploration in particle physics, whose outstanding highlight so far has been the discovery of the Higgs boson. However, as the direct detection of new phenomena not captured by the Standard Model of particle physics has eluded us so far, the search for subtle deviations of measured data from theoretical predictions is taking center stage. The increased sensitivity and precision of the experiments poses a formidable theoretical challenge though, as predictions must be computed at similarly high accuracies. In particular, the sophisticated modeling of the strong interaction (QCD) in particle collisions is indispensable. In this talk, I will give an overview on the status of perturbative QCD calculations and recent advances in computational techniques, as well as present some current directions of development. I will also touch on the precise determination of the strong coupling constant and highlight the important role played by precise perturbative QCD calculations in these measurements.
