Combining energy and precision, a muon collider provides unprecedented physics reach. See the Snowmass Muon Collider Forum report and Energy Frontier report for more.
Over the past few years the theory community has driven a resurgence of interest in the muon collider, and specifically set the target as 10 TeV based on a robust physics case. The physics case established so far has been rooted in a few key directions.
The first and most clearly defined direction with guaranteed deliverables is understanding EWSB and the Higgs in ways that would take us beyond the next generation Higgs factories that are proposed. The second is that it provides the most robust test and discovery opportunities for the WIMP paradigm of Dark Matter. Finally a host of other BSM possibilities have been studied that all are better enabled at high energies that a muon collider provides, as well as enabling the most powerful discovery machine for anything related to the Electroweak sector of the Standard Model.
How can theory continue contributing in this exponential trajectory? Given that the physics case does not depend on any particular machine location what, if anything, is US specific about a theory contribution? What are the resources available and what could be further sought out in the near future? Given that theory is not as constrained as accelerator and experimental R&D by the fiscal cycles it’s clear that theory has an opportunity to possibly make the largest impact in the next few years.
In particular, based on US expertise and focus, theory efforts could substantially grow for the muon collider in the areas of dark sectors and neutrino physics. In addition, interested phenomenologists could venture further into the world of simulation, learning to incorporate the detailed simulation tools used by experiment and accelerator into their work.