Jesse Liu (NYU), The LHC as a Photon Collider and Cosmic-ray Lab

Thursday 28 May 2026, 15:00 → 17:00 US/Eastern

CFNS Library

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is enjoying a renaissance of creativity, broadening its science by crossing disciplinary boundaries. Two exciting initiatives are turning the LHC into a photon collider to probe quantum dipoles, and an astroparticle laboratory for cosmic-ray physics. Particle beams generically emit photons that can collide to create tau-leptons. This process illuminates the poorly constrained tau-lepton magnetic dipole (g–2) and new physics hidden in quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. Meanwhile, the LHC recently pioneered proton-oxygen collisions, recreating cosmic rays striking Earth's atmosphere. These highly-anticipated results decisively sharpen air showers to help astrophysicists unravel the mysterious origins of cosmic rays above PeV energies.