H2020Индивидуална стипендия2016–2018

NUTS · Nuclei Using Topological Solitons

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2016-10-01 → 2018-09-30
Финансиране от ЕС: 183 455 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF-EF-ST

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Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Nuclei Using Topological Solitons

Atomic nuclei contain protons and neutrons, which in turn consist of quarks held together by the strong force. One of the major outstanding problems in modern nuclear physics is to calculate the properties of nuclei directly from the fundamental theory of the strong force, quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Among others, this issue was address by the British physicist Tony Skyrme more than half a century ago. His proposal was based on a nonlinear object known as a topological soliton —a particle-like solution of a nonlinear wave equation, where stability is due to a topological twisting or winding. In this context, the relevant topological soliton was called Skyrmion in his honour and it has the interesting feature that the associated topological number can be identified with the baryon number. Hence, Skyrmions provide a novel approach, but despite decades of research the success of Skyrmions has been limited by two crucial failings. Firstly, Skyrmions predict atomic nuclei that are bound together too tightly to reproduce experimental results. Secondly, Skyrmions predict intrinsic shapes for nuclei that are often too symmetric and fail to match the clustering of light nuclei, in which molecular-like structures appear. The main objective of the proposal is to improve current models of Skyrmions, by including more complicated features that are usually neglected, with the aim being to ameliorate the above main failings. This novel approach builds a bridge between the worlds of high energy particle physics and nuclear physics that will be important for making predictions about experimentally unknown nuclei and matter under extreme conditions, such as in the interior of neutron stars. This project has been successful by showing that the inclusion of a type of subatomic particle (called a rho meson) that is usually neglected in studying Skyrmions, indeed addresses the main problems mentioned above and significantly improves the match to experimental data.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Particle physicists have a good understanding of the fundamental constituents of matter, but the complexity of the theory means that it is impossible (even with supercomputers) to use it to predict the properties of even the simplest atoms familiar from everyday life, such as helium and carbon. Fathoming the core of these atoms is the realm of nuclear physics, but current approaches are detached from fundamental theory and instead are mainly based on fitting phenomenological models to experimental data. The ambitious aim of this project is to provide the missing link between fundamental theory and nuclear physics.At the heart of the methodology for this audacious proposal is a concept known as a topological soliton -- a particle-like solution of a nonlinear wave equation, where stability is due to a topological twisting or winding. A combination of analytic and numerical work over the last twenty years has shown that topological solitons can provide a reasonable qualitative description of some aspects of nuclei, but a quantitative comparison has failed because of a long-standing problem that soliton predictions yield nuclear binding energies that are too large. However, in recent work by the researcher (Naya-Rodriguez) and collaborators, and independently by the supervisor (Sutcliffe), significant breakthroughs have been made that demonstrate the ability to reduce soliton binding energies to the correct nuclear physics levels and hence solve this long-standing problem. These new developments mean that this proposal is incredibly timely, and by uniting these two previously independent European groups there is an opportunity to make ground-breaking progress by developing these new analytical methods in combination with state-of-the-art computing capabilities. This will have a tremendous impact, particularly in the study of nuclear matter under extreme conditions, for example, as found in neutron stars and in harnessing the energy source offered by nuclear fusion.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM · DURHAMКоординаторОбединеното кралство