Future collider experiments, and in particular the LHC, are machines designed to probe electroweak symmetry breaking and TeV scale physics. If there should be a light Higgs boson, we expect some mechanism to stabilize its mass. The LHC is the perfect machine to test such TeV-scale extensions of the Standard Model. Giving examples in the frameworks of TeV-scale supersymmetry and large extra dimensions I will show how at the LHC we should be able to measure masses and quantum numbers of new particles, which would allow us to study the Lagrangian of a possible ultraviolet completions of the Standard Model. I will also illustrate how the highly complex theoretical and experimental situation at the LHC requires us to properly formulate our model hypotheses and to ask well-defined questions to finally get the answers we have been waiting for so long.

University of Edinburgh