After a long period of searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), no tantalizing evidence of new physics has been found. An obvious question going forward is what we are going to do about it, and how we are going to make a progress, to understand the next layer of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM).
The null result has broken new ground in the search for new physics, and this is where our many paths diverge. We cannot completely rule out the possibility that new particles are hidden in final states that were hitherto neglected, due to the theoretical bias. New particles could be very light, weakly-coupled, or completely neutral to the SM, so that low energy experiments or cosmological data could provide a compelling evidence. Alternatively, new particles could simply be too heavy to be directly probed at the LHC.
Although it is vital to prepare ourselves to seize all the opportunities ahead, this does not mean that we should mindlessly poke at every single possibility with fingers crossed. That is, it is time to challenge some of the assumptions and paradigms that we have been holding, to start thinking about different ideas, and test new hypotheses in different ways and with new perspectives. There is a chance to find new patterns and hints that could possibly sets us on the path to understanding the next layer of reality. This is a necessary preliminary step to synthesizing the shape of a theory that can naturally extend the SM. In light of this principle, my strategic research plan can be thematically categorized as follows,
Cosmological Particle Production and Pairwise Hotspots on the CMB
Imprints of Inflationary Particles on the Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
Cosmological Signatures of Hidden Naturalness Models
Identifying Untapped Signatures of New Particles at the LHC
In the following, I summarize my research achievements and plans in detail.