The SM@LHC conference, held May 7-10, 2024 in Rome, dealt with the latest developments and future prospects in standard model phenomenology at the LHC, with emphasis on the most interesting and topical aspects at the interface between theory and experiment. While all talks were plenary, the conference was split in sessions devoted to Electroweak, QCD, Higgs, Top, Heavy Flavour, and EFT. For specific subjects, there were also joint sessions among groups and a few “Young Scientist Forum” talks to give opportunities to young people to report on their current work.
At this conference, it was not expected to cover all possible topics of the standard model ongoing at the LHC, as it happens for instance at the LHCP and Moriond conferences, but rather to focus on a few specific hot issues, also considering the connection with the other sessions of the conference. There were usually three or four conveners for every topical session, both theorists and experimentalists. They decided the subjects and suggested how the various talks should be split. Another aspect was that the talks should not last a long time. It was encouraged that the talks were not very dense, so that the topics could be explained in detail, and with enough time for discussions and questions. Discussions during the coffee breaks or meal times were also an important part of the conference.
The conference took place at the “Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche” in Rome, Italy. The conference room had a capacity of about 200 people, large enough for the about 100–110 people attending the conference. Both coffee breaks and lunch meals happened within the same building, and therefore we were able to keep the good working-type atmosphere the whole day.
In the Electroweak session, the main topics were about improving the theoretical precision of neutral- and charge-current Drell-Yan processes (see e.g., talks by Torrielli and Vicini), the new developments in polarized measurements (see talks by Poncelet and Di Ciaccio), and the fresh new Run 3 results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments. In other sessions, there were a lot of discussions about EFT, combination of several analyses, and the implications on many topics, and the puzzling Top-quark entanglement results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments. Given the large available data samples, there were several talks regarding precision measurements and accurate calculations in final states with light- and heavy-flavor jets. Finally, it was remarkable to see the observation of collider neutrinos by the very forward SND@LHC and FASER experiments.