Research project MIAU, Matter and Interactions at Accelerators and in Universe

Project duration: 01. 06. 2014. - 30. 09. 2018.

Summary

Hadrons, such as proton or pion, are particles composed of quarks and gluons which interact through fundamental strong force. Objective of MIAU project is to contribute to our understanding of this strong force as described by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Additionally, we aim to study physical processes happening at hadron accelerators, including electroweak production of as-yet-unseen particles at the large hadron collider (LHC). Thereby, we will investigate models of new physics in which such new particles are introduced in attempts to explain neutrino masses and abundance of dark matter in the universe. To achieve these objectives we will study specific hadronic processes, both in the high-energy regime where strong force is weak enough for perturbative approach, as well as in regimes where non-perturbative features of QCD, such as confinement and chiral symmetry breaking come to the fore. Our focus will be on processes measured by the range of experimental collaborations which will facilitate close contact with reality and immediate testing of our results and ideas. As outcome, we expect to be able to significantly improve the knowledge of the quark-gluon structure of the proton, as encoded by the so-called generalized parton distributions, to improve the description of various meson properties in vacuum and at finite densities and temperatures, to elucidate QCD phase diagram in model frameworks, and to set bounds to the parameter space of several models of new physics.

Team members

• Sanjin Benić
• Ivan Dadić
• Davor Horvatić
• Amon Ilakovac
• Dalibor Kekez
• Dubravko Klabučar
• Krešimir Kumerički (PI)
• Timon Mede
• Dieter Müller
• Ivica Picek

PhD student:

• Petar Čuljak

Publications

• List of publications (CROSBI - Croatian Scientific Bibliography)

Acknowledgement

This work has been fully supported [supported in part] by the Croatian
Science Foundation under the project number 8799.