Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Individual

The last decade was triumphal for the Standard Model (SM), which is the field theoretical framework for strong<br /> and electroweak interactions. The two culminating events were: a) the creation of the deconfinement phase of<br /> the quark-gluon matter at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and b) the discovery of the 125 GeV Higgs<br /> boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Besides that, during past decades, a remarkable overlap of such<br /> seemingly different areas in physics as condensed matter and relativistic physics took place. It was especially<br /> clearly manifested in graphene (one atom thick sheet of carbon atoms). Such well known phenomena as the<br /> Klein paradox, the dynamics of a supercritical charge, and the dynamical generation of a Dirac mass in a<br /> magnetic field (magnetic catalysis), revealed in relativistic field theory, were first observed in studies of<br /> graphene.<br /> <br /> Still, there are unresolved problems in the SM theory, such as the origin of the mass spectrum of quarks and<br /> leptons, and the phase diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at finite density, finite temperature, and<br /> in external electromagnetic fields. These problems are connected either with still unknown or poorly understood<br /> nonperturbative dynamics in quantum field theory.<br /> <br /> This project will be devoted to studies of nonperturbative dynamics in the following three main directions: a) the<br /> dynamics of dense relativistic matter in external electromagnetic fields and its manifestations in heavy ion<br /> collisions and astrophysics (magnetars), b) the problem of the origin of the mass spectrum of quarks and<br /> leptons, and c) I am also planning to continue the studies of such relativistic like condensed matter systems<br /> as graphene and Dirac and Weyl semimetals by using advanced methods developed in quantum field theory<br /> (it is noticeable that Dirac semimetals were produced very recently, in the fall of 2013).<br /> The results obtained in this project will be relevant for: a) understanding the physics of compact stars,<br /> in particular, magnetars, and for heavy ion collisions at the RHIC and LHC experiments; b) understanding the origin<br /> of quarks and lepton masses and Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mass matrix; c) description of dynamics and transport<br /> phenomena in graphene and Dirac/Weyl semimetals.<br />