Descripción del proyecto
Dilucidar los matices de las interacciones fuertes
La interacción nuclear fuerte es la más fuerte de las cuatro fuerzas o interacciones fundamentales descritas por el modelo estándar de la física de partículas. Solo es eficaz en rangos muy cortos y, por lo tanto, es esencial a nivel de partículas subatómicas: es el «pegamento» que confina a los quarks para formar hadrones, que incluyen a los protones y neutrones, y los retiene en el núcleo. En el proyecto EXOTIC, financiado con fondos europeos, se emplearán los avances en la teoría de campos logrados por sus investigadores para responder importantes preguntas sin responder sobre los hadrones, los núcleos atómicos, los hipernúcleos y la nucleosíntesis en el contexto de la interacción nuclear fuerte. Estos métodos permiten la investigación de universos alternativos, donde la interacción nuclear fuerte es diferente a la observada en la naturaleza.
Objetivo
The least understood part of the so successful Standard Model of the strong and electroweak forces
is the formation of strongly interacting composites, like hadrons, atomic nuclei and hypernuclei. In
addition, the nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang and in stars is fine-tuned at various places, which
immediately leads to the question how much these fine-tunings can be offset to still lead to an habitable
universe?
Over the last decade, the PI and his collaborators have further improved the chiral effective field
theory for two- and three-nucleon forces, have pioneered and refined the extension of this approach to
baryon-baryon interactions and, most importantly, have developed nuclear lattice effective field theory,
which enabled them to solve longstanding problems in nuclear physics, like the ab initio calculation of
the Hoyle state in 12C. Based on these achievements, this proposal will provide answers to: i) where
are the limits of nuclear stability? ii) what hypernuclei can exist, what are their properties and how is
the equation of state of neutron matter modied by the presence of strange quarks?
and iii) what limits on the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model are set by the fine-tunings in
nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang and in stars?
Apart from answering these big science questions, the proposal will, as a by-product, develop methods
in effective field theories and Monte Carlo simulations that will be of use in other fields, such as cold
atom and condensed matter physics.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantInstitución de acogida
53113 Bonn
Alemania