PLANCK2026 at CERN

PLANCK2026 at CERN: Following my talk at the Nikhef (National Institute for Subatomic Physics) Neutrino Platform on Tuesday, today I had the privilege of presenting on the same topic, Physics with TeV Neutrinos and Muons from the LHC, at the PLANCK 2026 & 6th EuCAPT Symposium at CERN (https://lnkd.in/emwNTf8i), a joint conference bringing together the high energy physics and astroparticle theory communities. A perfect audience for this topic, and a great opportunity to establish new connections.

A few highlights that resonated particularly with this audience:

1) The FASER Experiment was born as a BSM experiment. Its original goal was to search for light dark sector particles: dark photons, feebly-interacting particles (FIPs), long-lived particles (LLPs). Thanks to a new theoretical infrastructure for neutrino production and scattering, we can now extend FASER beyond its original mandate and turn it into a precision QCD microscope

2) the CERN LHC operating at 7 TeV in the centre-of-mass frame is equivalent to a ~100,000 TeV fixed-target experiment: a direct laboratory counterpart of the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray interactions that experiments like Auger, IceCube, and KM3NeT probe. The recent KM3NeT Neutrino detection of KM3-230213A, the most energetic elementary particle ever detected, makes this connection more urgent than ever. We need reliable QCD modelling of neutrino production and scattering all the way up to 100 PeV, and FASER data can calibrate this.

3) TeV muons produced at the LHC and reaching FASER are not just a background: they enable muon deep-inelastic scattering in a kinematic regime that overlaps with the future Electron-Ion Collider. In particular, charm production in muon DIS is the ultimate probe of intrinsic quarks in the proton, and with data already on tape, definitive evidence may be within reach with FASER.

The LHC forward region is a goldmine for particle physics, astroparticle physics, and the search for new phenomena. With the complete Run 3 dataset on tape for FASER, the best is yet to come!