In a paper published in Nature, the ALICE collaboration describes a technique that opens a door to high-precision studies at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the dynamics of the strong force between hadrons. A group of Warsaw University of Technology research scientists is involved in the ALICE project.

Join special "Nature" seminar ALICE collaboration opens avenue for high-precision studies of the strong force by Łukasz Graczykowski, Ph.D. (December 15 at 2 p.m.) >>> 

Hadrons interact via a residual strong force that is unmeasured for most hadron species. The measurement and quantitative understanding of the strong interaction among hadrons is considered to be one of the frontiers within the standard model of nuclear and particle physics.

Scattering experiments and spectroscopy studies of stable and unstable nuclei allowed us to quantify the residual nuclear force among nucleons rather precisely, but for unstable hadrons as baryons containing strange quarks (hyperons) such measurements are extremely difficult.

The ALICE collaboration recently demonstrated that by combining excellent particle identification and a momentum correlation analysis method applied to pp and p-Pb collisions at the LHC, it is possible to measure the strong interaction among all hadrons containing strange quarks and protons.

The case in point discussed in the recent publication by ALICE concerns the correlation between a proton and the rarest of hyperons: the Omega(sss). The precisely measured proton-Omega correlation clearly evidences an attractive strong interaction among the two hadrons and tests theoretical predictions by first principle calculations based on lattice gauge theory methods for the first time.

These measurements open a new avenue in nuclear physics, with the potential of accessing the strong force between any hadron pair.

based on: https://indico.cern.ch/

Read more in the latest "Nature"

Co-authors affiliated with WUT:

mgr inż. Daniel Dąbrowski, mgr inż. Kamil Deja, dr inż. Łukasz Graczykowski, dr Rihan Haque, dr inż. Monika Jakubowska, dr inż. Małgorzata Janik, mgr inż. Przemysław Karczmarczyk, prof. dr hab. inż. Adam Kisiel, dr Georgy Kornakov, mgr inż. Julian Myrcha, mgr inż. Łukasz Neumann, mgr inż. Piotr Nowakowski, dr inż. Janusz Oleniacz, prof. dr hab. inż. Przemysław Rokita, mgr inż. Krystian Rosłon, dr hab. inż. Tomasz Trzciński, dr hab. inż. Hanna Zbroszczyk, prof. uczelni