NPA Seminar, Sookhyun Lee, University of Michigan, “Probing proton structure and particle formation in high-energy particle collisions”

The Standard Model of particle physics describes fundamental forces in the universe – electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions. The strong interactions between quarks and gluons via color charges is described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). High-energy particle accelerators enable precision studies of the Standard Model and beyond and, in particular, answering fundamental open questions in QCD, concerning the processes underlying complex particle formation and the nature of emergent QCD. Hadrons are composite color neutral states that comprise much of the visible world around us. However, the hadron formation from freely moving, deconfined quarks is still not understood from first principles. The intricate and dynamic structure of a proton is only starting to be revealed. In high-energy scattering, hadrons often manifest themselves as part of a jet, a collimated array of particles generated by parton shower processes from an energetic parton created in high energy collisions. The past couple of decades saw theoretical breakthroughs in computing the properties of jets and their substructure, and advancements in experimental technique. The collective progress in this subfield is opening up new ways to study perturbative and (transition to) non-perturbative aspects of QCD at different distance scales. In this talk, I will review past and recent studies on proton structure and hadron formation at the Large Hadron Collider and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and a path to the Electron-Ion Collider, an actively developing premier project in the U.S. Nuclear Physics program.
Host: Nikhil Padmanabhan (nikhil.padmanabhan@yale.edu)