UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

Raul Briceño, Old Dominion University

“Sketches from the exotic world of quarks and gluons”

At the core of everyday matter is a complex inner world of subatomic particles. In particular, the nuclei of atoms are made of protons and neutrons, which are themselves made of even smaller particles known as quarks and gluons. Thanks to experiments, like the ones being carried out at Jefferson Lab, we have been able to peer inside and deduce the guiding principles for the behavior of quarks and gluons. This knowledge has been formalized into a fundamental theory of the strong nuclear force, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). However, despite having the theory in place for over 40 years, the connection between QCD and experiment has been historically limited by the fact that the strong nuclear force is “strongly interacting”. In this talk, I discuss recent theoretical progress that is finally allowing us to peer into the fascinating world of quarks and gluons.