Strange and charmed particles

Poster created for the Institution needs.

Transcript

1. Strange and charmed particles In our calculations we study various quantities that help us understand the properties of the baryons. They also provide insight on how matter formed during the early stages of the universe and how it took its current form. Some of these quantities are experimentally known, others are still unknown. Computing the known quantities first allows us to check if our theory and calculations are correct, before making predictions of the unknown quantities. Piz Daint, Switzerland, 8.0 PetaFlops Simulating nature Image courtesy of BMW Collaboration The complexity of the calculations demands that we simulate our theory on very large supercomputers, thousands of times faster than a laptop. Such supercomputers are the “Cy-Tera” at The Cyprus Institute and the “Piz Daint” at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center. The latter is the fastest in Europe. The Strong Nuclear Force The strong nuclear force is one of the four fundamental forces that exist in nature. It is responsible for binding protons, the most abundant particle in the universe, and neutrons to form atomic nuclei. In larger scales, the strong force is responsible for the formation of extremely dense stars that exist in the universe, called neutron stars. Keeping matter bound There are numerous combinations of quark flavors, each one forming a different baryon. According to the theory of strong interactions, all matter that we see consists mostly of elementary particles called quarks and gluons. Quarks come in six types or flavors, and can never be seen free. The gluons confine the quarks into composite particles, the hadrons. This confinement is a unique property of QCD that distinguishes it from the other three fundamental theories. People: C. Alexandrou K. Hadjiyiannakou C. Kallidonis G. Koutsou What’s the matter??? Depending on the flavor of quarks that each baryon contains, it can be classified as a light, strange or charmed baryon. It’s a matter of flavor… Baryons are a type of hadrons that consist of three quarks, like the proton and the neutron, which form the nucleus of the atom. The size of a proton is about 100 billion times smaller than the thickness of human hair. During the first second from the creation of the universe, the strong force confined the sea of elementary particles into the visible matter that today forms planets, stars and galaxies. Understanding how the strong nuclear force works is important in our attempt to understand its implications on the structure of all visible matter. The strong nuclear force is described by a fascinating theory, called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), with constituents the six quarks and eight gluons. light baryon u u d strange baryon u s d charmed baryon c d c Cy-Tera, Cyprus, 30 TeraFlops