USD Physics Professor Earns Department of Energy Grant to Study Nuclear Matter
Vaidya’s research, entitled “Understanding Hot and Cold Nuclear Matter with Effective Field Theories,” will use theoretical tools to predict the outcomes of physical experiments at the largest and most powerful particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and the Electron Ion Collider currently being built at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island.
Significant mystery surrounds the behavior of nuclear matter. Vaidya explains that scientists have long known that the protons and neutrons that make up the nuclear core of atoms consist of even tinier particles called quarks and gluons.
“While the fundamental theory for quarks and gluons, called quantum chromodynamics, is known, it is extremely hard to solve and understanding how these quarks and gluons actually come together to make up nuclei and is one of the outstanding problems of modern physics,” Vaidya said.
Experiments at a few of the most powerful modern particle accelerators around the globe can create quark gluon plasma by colliding two “heavy” nuclei (which have a large number of protons), such as lead or gold. The Department of Energy grant gives Vaidya the opportunity to compare his theoretical predictions with empirical experiments.
“By comparing theory with experiment, it will allow us to refine our understanding of these two phases of quantum chromodynamics — nuclei and quark gluon plasma,” he said.
Understanding the nature of these two phases will help answer some fundamental questions about our world, especially since a large number of quarks and gluons can collectively exhibit unexpected behavior not immediately manifest in the simple rules set by the quantum chromodynamics theory.
“For example, protons and neutrons exhibit a property called confinement, whose origins remain a mystery even though the fundamental theory that describes how individual quarks and gluons interact, namely quantum chromodynamics, is well understood,” he said. “Likewise, the quark gluon plasma, which is a high temperature phase of the same fundamental theory, displays all the properties of a liquid. In fact, it has the smallest viscosity, or resistance to flow, known for any liquid ever created.”
This research grant is funded through the Department of Energy’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a competitive merit-based funding opportunity at the national level across all scientific disciplines.
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