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[PAST EVENT] Physics Colloquium
January 31, 2013
4pm - 5pm
Abstract:
At scales a few billion times smaller than microscopic, quark and gluon interactions are responsible for the properties of protons and neutrons. While these femtoscopic degrees of freedom have been identified for nearly a half century, quantitative predictions from the theory of strong interactions have remained elusive until quite recently. I will bring the difficulties of the femtoscopic world into focus, and describe the progress being made at predicting properties of protons and neutrons. Resolving physics at the femtoscale will fill a fundamental gap in our understanding of the strong force. This quantitative understanding will solve old problems, such as why protons and neutrons have the masses and magnetic moments they do, in addition to new problems, such as how protons and neutrons couple to physics beyond the standard model.
At scales a few billion times smaller than microscopic, quark and gluon interactions are responsible for the properties of protons and neutrons. While these femtoscopic degrees of freedom have been identified for nearly a half century, quantitative predictions from the theory of strong interactions have remained elusive until quite recently. I will bring the difficulties of the femtoscopic world into focus, and describe the progress being made at predicting properties of protons and neutrons. Resolving physics at the femtoscale will fill a fundamental gap in our understanding of the strong force. This quantitative understanding will solve old problems, such as why protons and neutrons have the masses and magnetic moments they do, in addition to new problems, such as how protons and neutrons couple to physics beyond the standard model.