Project description
Untangling the nuances of strong interactions
The strong force is the strongest of the four fundamental forces or interactions described by the Standard Model of particle physics. It is effective only over very short ranges, and therefore it is critical at the level of subatomic particles. It is the glue that confines quarks to form hadron particles such as protons and neutrons and holds them in the nucleus. The EU-funded EXOTIC project will apply advances in field theory achieved by its researchers to answer important open questions regarding hadrons, atomic nuclei, hypernuclei and nucleosynthesis in the context of the strong force. These methods enable investigation of alternative universes, where the strong force is different to what one observes in Nature.
Objective
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.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantHost institution
53113 Bonn
Germany