Project
The strong interaction at the frontier of knowledge:fundamental research and applications
Code 824093 - STRONG-2020
Beneficiary Entity
LIP - Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas
Project summary
The objectives of this action are to federate leading experimental and theoretical groups in EU in order to carry out new fundamental and applied research studies at the frontier of our current knowledge of the strong interaction, the force that binds together quarks and gluons and, ultimately, forms the visible baryon matter of our universe. The underlying quantum field theory that describes the strong interaction, quantum chromodynamics (QCD), has an extremely rich dynamical content (asymptotic freedom, confinement, approximate chiral symmetry, non-trivial vacuum topology…). This translates into a very diverse many-body phenomenology at various limits: at high temperatures the Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP), at large quark densities the colour superconductivity, at very low parton fractional momenta the colour glass condensate (CGC), etc. Also, many of the fundamental parameters of the Standard Model (SM) like the strong coupling constant, the quark masses, the matrix elements of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mixing (CKM) are also directly connected to QCD. A good understanding of the interaction between light-, heavy-quarks, and gluons is crucial for searches of physics beyond the SM. The study of QCD is mostly carried out through electron-positron (e+e-), lepton-proton (e-p, mu-p), electron-nucleus (e-A), proton-proton (p-p), antiproton-proton, proton-nucleus (p-A), antiproton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus (A-A) collisions at low (20 GeV) center-of-mass (c.m.) energies in world-class experimental facilities for which Transnational Access (TA) is requested.
The ambition of STRONG-2020 is to provide significant advances in our understanding of the strong interaction through an efficient and coherent synergy of selected experimental, theoretical, and instrumentation work packages (WP), combined with world-class accelerator facilities, aiming at solving many fundamental open issues in various key directions described in the Objectives section. Such studies will have impact beyond the physics of the strong interaction per se, fostering progress in many other particle physics and astrophysics areas. For example, in direct searches of new heavy particles at the LHC, a precise understanding of parton densities at high fractional momenta in the proton (high-x) is a cornerstone element. In indirect searches of new physics, a control of virtual low-energy QCD corrections is relevant to high-precision measurements of the (g-2)-factor of the muon, searches for electric dipole moments, parity violation experiments etc. Hadron properties play also an important role in other precision SM studies such as in the neutrino sector (mass hierarchy measurements, CP-violation...). A good knowledge of the equation-of-state of ultra-dense baryonic matter is also fundamental to understand the very recent gravitational-wave results emerging from neutron star collisions.
Support under
Reforçar a investigação, o desenvolvimento tecnológico e a inovação
Region of Intervention
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