Quark flavor physics: Status and future prospects

Abstract

Quark flavor physics is the study of hadrons, their properties, and their decays into other particles. As a discipline, it simultaneously catalogues the nature of physical states within the Standard Model of particle physics, and in doing so tests the consistency and completeness of the Standard Model’s description of reality. Following the discovery of the Higgs field, it is more essential than ever to critically examine the Standard Model’s own coherence. Precision studies of quark flavor are one of the most sensitive experimental instruments for this task. I give a brief and necessarily selective overview of recent developments in quark flavor physics and discuss prospects for the next generation of experiments and facilities, with an emphasis on the energy scales of beyond Standard Model physics probed by these types of measurements.