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A new method, based on the absorption of very high-energy gamma-rays by the cosmic infrared background, is proposed to constrain the value of the Hubble constant. As this value is both fundamental for cosmology and still not very well…
The standard model of particle physics is an extremely successful theory of fundamental interactions, but it has many known limitations. It is therefore widely believed to be an effective field theory that describes interactions near the…
Searches for new astrophysical phenomena often involve several sources of non-random uncertainties which can lead to highly misleading results. Among these, model-uncertainty arising from background mismodelling can dramatically compromise…
Given the absence of direct evidence for new resonances beyond the Standard Model (BSM) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) so far, a complementary strategy to search for new physics in an indirect way is provided by the Standard Model…
This is an auspicious moment in experimental particle physics -there are large data samples at the Tevatron and a new energy regime being explored at the Large Hadron Collider with ever larger data samples. The coincidence of these two…
Our present knowledge of neutrinos can be summarized in terms of the "standard neutrino scenario". Phenomenology of this scenario as well as attempts to uncover physics behind neutrino mass and mixing are described. Goals of future studies…
Motivated by deviations with respect to Standard Model predictions in $b\to s\ell^+\ell^-$ decays, we evaluate the global significance of the new physics hypothesis in this system by including the {\it look-elsewhere effect} for the first…
Many questions of fundamental interest in todays science can be formulated as inference problems: Some partial, or noisy, observations are performed over a set of variables and the goal is to recover, or infer, the values of the variables…
We construct a surrogate loss to directly optimise the significance metric used in particle physics. We evaluate our loss function for a simple event classification task using a linear model and show that it produces decision boundaries…
In this paper, we present a consistent procedure to assess the significance of gravitational wave events observed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors based on the background distribution of detection statistic. We propose…
Since the discovery of the Higgs boson, testing the many possible extensions to the Standard Model has become a key challenge in particle physics. This paper discusses a new method for predicting the compatibility of new physics theories…
We investigate the potential to probe new neutrino physics with future experiments measuring coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering. Experiments with high statistics should become feasible soon and allow to constrain parameters with…
In this paper two hypotheses are developed. The first hypothesis is the existence of random phenomena/experiments in which the events cannot generally be assigned a definite probability but that nevertheless admit a class of nearly certain…
We present the results and prospects for searches beyond the Standard Model (SM) at the LHC by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations. The minimal supersymmetric extension of the SM has been investigated in various configurations and lower limits…
It is a common phenomenon in nature and technology that a system under perturbations exits a regime of its usual dynamics. Often it is possible to define a potential function whereby a potential well can be associated with a usual or…
Probability interference is a fundamental characteristic of quantum mechanics. In this paper we attempt to show with the help of some examples, where this fundamental trait of quantum physics can be found back in a social science…
Judging the significance and reproducibility of quantitative research requires a good understanding of relevant uncertainties, but it is often unclear how well these have been evaluated and what they imply. Reported scientific uncertainties…
This article is the written version of the closing talk presented at the conference `A Century of Cosmology' held at San Servolo, Italy, in August 2007. I focus on the prospects of constraining fundamental physics from cosmological…
These lectures introduce key concepts in probability and statistical inference at a level suitable for graduate students in particle physics. Our goal is to paint as vivid a picture as possible of the concepts covered.
The wealth of experimental data collected at laboratory experiments suggests that there is some scale separation between the Standard Model (SM) and phenomena beyond the SM (BSM). New phenomena can manifest itself as small corrections to SM…