Descrizione del progetto
Chiarire le sfumature delle interazioni forti
La forza forte è la più intensa delle quattro forze o interazioni fondamentali descritte dal modello standard della fisica delle particelle. Essa è efficace solamente in un raggio d’azione molto limitato ed è pertanto fondamentale a livello di particelle subatomiche. Questa forza rappresenta il collante che confina i quark formando particelle di adroni, come i protoni e i neutroni, e li mantiene nel nucleo. Il progetto EXOTIC, finanziato dall’UE, applicherà i progressi compiuti dai ricercatori che si occupano di teoria dei campi allo scopo di rispondere a interrogativi aperti in merito ad adroni, nuclei atomici, ipernuclei e nucleosintesi nell’ambito della forza forte. Questi metodi consentono di approfondire universi alternativi, dove la forza forte è diversa da quanto risulta osservabile in natura.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantIstituzione ospitante
53113 Bonn
Germania