News¶
August 2026 — New paper on HiggsTools¶
Thomas and Kateryna, together with Henning Bahl, Sven Heinemeyer, and Georg Weiglein, published a new paper, "HiggsTools for LHC Run 3 and Beyond". HiggsTools is a framework — comprising HiggsPredictions, HiggsBounds, and HiggsSignals — used to confront models of physics beyond the Standard Model with LHC data on the Higgs sector, by providing predictions for scalar production and decay, testing models against exclusion limits from searches for additional scalars, and deriving constraints from the measured properties of the discovered Higgs boson. The paper presents a range of new features, including updated cross-section predictions at 13.6 and 14 TeV, predictions for resonant and non-resonant Higgs pair production, the implementation of multi-top final state searches, coupling-dependent constraints on non-resonant Higgs pair production, and an improved treatment of pre-discovery Higgs searches and scalars with uncertain masses.
July 2026 — Talks at the COMETA workshop in Sarajevo¶
Thomas and Kateryna both gave talks at the COMETA workshop on BSM in Multiboson Processes, held at the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo from July 8–10, 2026. The workshop, organized within the COMETA COST Action, brought together theorists and experimentalists to explore multiboson processes as a probe of physics beyond the Standard Model. Thomas gave a talk titled "Baryogenesis and the interplay with multi-boson processes", connecting the electroweak phase transition and the origin of matter to signatures accessible in multiboson final states. Kateryna presented "Interference effects in Higgs pair production", discussing the role of interference in searches for new physics in Higgs boson pair production at the LHC.
June 2026 — Talk at Extended Scalar Sectors From All Angles 2026¶
Thomas gave the opening talk at Extended Scalar Sectors From All Angles 2026, a workshop held at CERN from June 1–5, 2026, bringing together theorists and experimentalists to discuss current status and future perspectives for the discovery of new physics in extended scalar sectors. In the first part of his talk, Thomas presented benchmark planes for future LHC searches motivated by electroweak baryogenesis and future gravitational wave signals at LISA. The second part discussed how spin correlations of final-state top quarks can boost sensitivity in direct searches for new physics in multiboson processes.
May 2026 — Kateryna's talk at LHCP 2026¶
Kateryna gave a talk at LHCP 2026 (14th Edition of the Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference), one of the most important annual conferences on LHC physics, held at CICSU (Sorbonne Université) in Paris, France, from May 18–22, 2026. Her talk, "Extended scalar sectors and Higgs pair production at the LHC", discussed searches for new Higgs bosons and the role of future searches for Higgs boson pair production signatures at the LHC.
May 2026 — Visit by Andrii Dashko¶
Andrii Dashko (DESY Hamburg / University of Granada) visited the group from May 10–15, 2026. During his stay he gave a seminar at the IFT titled "Perturbative aspects of electroweak phase transitions in the Early Universe" on May 14, 2026. The talk examined how strong first-order electroweak phase transitions relevant to gravitational wave cosmology can be described using perturbative methods and dimensional reduction, with applications to the Standard Model Effective Field Theory and singlet extensions of the Standard Model.
May 2026 — Outreach talk by Kateryna¶
Kateryna gave an outreach presentation on the Higgs potential and cosmology at Hasta la física y más allá: próxima parada, el futuro, a public science afternoon hosted at the IFT UAM-CSIC on May 14, 2026. The event brought together students, researchers, and science communicators for talks on some of the most fascinating questions in contemporary physics, covering topics from black holes and machine learning to cosmology. Kateryna's contribution introduced the audience to the physics of the Higgs potential and its connections to the evolution of the early universe.
April 2026 — Colloquium talk at Paul Scherrer Institute¶
Thomas gave a colloquium talk titled "The electroweak phase transition and the origin of matter" at the Laboratory for Particle Physics of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland, on April 30, 2026. The talk discussed the role of the electroweak phase transition in explaining the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe, and explored how collider physics, gravitational wave observations, and electric dipole moment (EDM) measurements can work together to probe the CP violation required for baryogenesis.
March 2026 — Invited overview talk at DPG Spring Meeting in Erlangen¶
Thomas gave an invited overview talk (Hauptvortrag) titled "Higgs Physics at the LHC and Beyond: Connecting Colliders and the Early Universe" at the DPG Spring Meeting in Erlangen, Germany, on March 18, 2026. The conference, the 89th Annual Conference of the German Physical Society (DPG), was held at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg from March 15–20, 2026. The talk discussed the Higgs boson and its potential extensions beyond the Standard Model, covering precision measurements at the LHC, searches for additional scalar particles, dark matter scenarios, and connections to the electroweak phase transition and primordial gravitational waves detectable by observatories such as LISA.