Intro to Particle and Nuclear Physics and the Long Island Gold Rush Steven Manly Univ. of Rochester REU seminar June 1, 2006

Inquiring minds want to know... Yo! What holds it together?

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (near Chicago)

CDFMinos

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Event display from the SLD experiment at SLAC

What forces exist in nature? What is a force? How do forces change with energy or temperature? How has the universe evolved? How do they interact?

quarks leptons Gauge bosons u c t d s b e   W, Z, g,  G g Hadrons Baryons qqq qq mesons p = uud n = udd K = us or us  = ud or ud Strong interaction nuclei e atoms Electromagnetic interaction 

Mini-Ph.D. – Quantum Mechanics 101 Lesson 1: Size actually does matter.

Determine the postion and velocity of a car … no problem

Determine the postion and velocity of a small particle … no problem

Problem! Heisenberg uncertainty principle Cannot have perfect knowledge of both the position and velocity Heisenberg

Dear Steve, Party relatively hard! -Al The fundamental nature of forces: virtual particles  E  t  h Heisenberg E = mc 2 Einstein e-e-

e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e-qq qq qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e- qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e- qq qq e+e-e+e-e+e-e+e- Much ado about NOTHING: Nothing is something Nothing has energy Nothing interacts with something -R. Kolb

qq qq qqq A contribution to mass at the quantum level Strongly interacting particles interact with the vacuum condensate … which can make them much heavier than the constituent quark masses.

-MSSL astrophysics group

BANG! TIME

Very hot, dense primordial soup of fundamental particles

At second after bang, protons and neutrons form

At 3 minutes, light nuclei form

At ~300,000 years, t = 3000 degrees, atoms form and light streams freely

t=~13 billion years, Brittney Spears gets married … again

Modern accelerators study processes at energies that existed VERY early in the universe Another form of time travel ! What were forces like at those temperatures? What types of particles existed?

Strong color field Energy grows with separation !!! E=mc 2 ! “white” proton quark quark-antiquark pair created from vacuum “white” proton (confined quarks) “white”  0 (confined quarks) Quantum Chromodynamics QCD distance energy density, temperature relative strength asymptotic freedom Similar to QED … except the gauge field carries the charge Thanks to Mike Lisa (OSU) for parts of this animation

e+e- collisions Heavy ion collisions

Relativistic heavy ions at Brookhaven National Laboratory

RHIC BRAHMS PHOBOS PHENIX STAR AGS TANDEMS Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) 1 km v =  c = 186,000 miles/sec Thanks to M. Lisa for parts of this slide

STAR ~500 Collaborators

One collision seen by STAR TPC

The PHOBOS Detector Silicon Pad Channels 1m Spectrometer Octagon Vertex Ring Counters Paddle Trigger Counter Cerenkov Counter Time of Flight

Collision region is football shaped

Elliptic flow Number of particles

(reaction plane) Flow quantified dN/d(  R ) = N 0 (1 + 2V 1 cos (  R ) + 2V 2 cos (2(  R ) +... )

b (reaction plane)

Elliptic Flow at 130 GeV Phys. Rev. Lett (2002) (PHOBOS : Normalized Paddle Signal) Hydrodynamic limit STAR: PRL86 (2001) 402 PHOBOS preliminary Hydrodynamic limit STAR: PRL86 (2001) 402 PHOBOS preliminary Thanks to M. Kaneta

Flow vs P t and  Hydro describes low pt vs. particle mass, fails at high p t and high-  T. Hirano (consider velocity and early, self- quenching asymmetry)

Places to learn more: Particle and nuclear physics links