Hamburg is a world-leading center for particle physics since many decades with numerous achievements. The cluster specifically engages in exploring the underlying physics giving rise to the property of mass of elementary particles, the microscopic mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, as well as the Higgs potential and its implications for the thermal evolution of the early universe. Here the broad expertise in collider physics, cosmology and astroparticle physics in Hamburg is indispensable. In parallel, new computational tools and high precision detection techniques are developed. More concretely the efforts pursued in the cluster include:

• Higgs and the Origin of Matter
  The discovery of a Higgs boson and the determination of its properties with increasing precision will be used to gain insights into visible and invisible matter. Future studies will cover the possible connections of the Higgs sector and the dark sector, new sources of CP violation relevant for baryogenesis, and the underlying physics that stabilizes the hierarchy of scales found in nature. Within the cluster this is pursued as a well-orchestrated effort among experimentalists (working both at ATLAS and CMS), computer scientists and theorists conducting an intense scientific discourse. 

• Higgs Potential
  The history of the universe was shaped by the electroweak phase transition that happened during the first instances, namely at about 10-10 sec., after the big bang. The occurrence of the electroweak phase transition and the way it proceeded was triggered by the properties of the Higgs sector. We aim to elucidate the form of the Higgs potential in the Standard Model from ATLAS and CMS measurements of the Higgs self-couplings and from effects of possible additional scalar fields. Extensive experimental and theoretical studies are conducted within the cluster in order to improve our understanding at the interface of cosmology and particle physics. 

• Tools and New Facilities for Future Higgs Characterization
  Crucial ingredients for substantial progress in this field are the development of sophisticated data analysis tools, often provided by the implementation of artificial intelligence, advanced theoretical predictions and targeted studies for future Higgs factories, like the FCC or HALHF.