Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Individual

The strong nuclear interaction is the force responsible for binding together protons and neutrons inside atomic nuclei, or, on a more fundamental level, it is the force responsible for binding quarks together inside the protons and neutrons themselves. Quantum chromodynamics is the theory that describes the strong nuclear interaction, and, in it, quarks interact with one another through the exchange of other particles called gluons. Interestingly enough, gluons can actually interact directly with quarks and other gluons through the same gluon exchange that mediates the strong force between quarks. In this way, quantum chromodynamics predicts that gluons can act as fundamental constituents inside bound states held together by the strong nuclear interaction. Hybrids are hypothesized bound states containing both quark and gluon constituents, and, despite more than four decades of searching by theoreticians and experimentalists alike, they have yet to be conclusively identified in experiment. Definitively labelling a particle a hybrid will require agreement between theory and experiment concerning a variety of particle properties. My research program is devoted to computing these properties on the theoretical side in order to guide experimental searches and to interpret the data obtained. Broadly speaking, my work is discovery research aimed at a better understanding of the strong nuclear interaction.