Abstract

Why hasn't the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) discovered anything beyond the Higgs boson? Because you're thinking about particle physics in the wrong way. The current moment necessitates a shift in mindset toward previously less-emphasized searches for things like long-lived particles, exotic decays of the Higgs boson, and evidence of QCD-like dark sector hadronization. I will report on some of the non-standard searches I have pursued at the LHC so far and discuss ideas for the near future and the HL-LHC (and beyond), including how the ATLAS Inner Tracker (ITk) upgrade can likely assist such searches. I will also discuss our current efforts to share expertise and knowledge about long-lived particle searches among the LHC experiments and theorists with the LHC LLP Community initiative. Finally, I shall place particle physics in a larger societal context and briefly examine how new ways of framing and discussing high-energy physics with non-specialists can greatly affect the broader impacts of our work.