STRONG-INTERACTIONS · Gauge Theories of Fundamental Interactions: Theory and Phenomenology
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2005-05-01 → 2009-04-30
- EU contribution
- €1,412,235
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- EXT
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Results in brief
Final Activity Report Summary - STRONG-INTERACTIONS (Gauge Theories of Fundamental Interactions: Theory and Phenomenology)
The project has led to several novel results which became known worldwide. We have made important progress in our understanding of strongly interacting theories in regimes not accessible via perturbative methods. This has led us to construct new models of nature able to address in a natural way some of the long standing problems related to the origin of bright and dark matter in the universe. We had a strong impact in 3 fields of research: Beyond Standard Model Physics, Strong Interactions and Lattice Field Theory. Beyond Standard Model Physics: We have pioneered, developed and motivated several new classes of models for breaking the electroweak symmetry dynamically passing the precision data. These models have a concrete chance of being discovered at the Large Hadron Collider. The models are known with the name of (Ultra) Minimal Walking Models. We have proposed models able to produce natural candidates of dark matter which can decay but not annihilate. We were the first to notice that astrophysical observations can directly test the existence of an underlying grand unified scheme. Strong Interactions: We have suggested new analytic ways to gain vital information on the phase diagram of strongly coupled theories. As an example we conjectured an all-orders beta function valid for any nonsupersymmetric gauge theory with fermionic matter. We uncovered the phase diagram as function of number of colours, matter representation and flavours, for Sp, SO and SU gauge groups and discovered a universal structure. Currently these phase diagrams are being investigated via supercomputer simulations by several groups in the world. In Lattice Field Theory we were the first to start investigating and observe, via first principle lattice computations, a possible large distance conformal phase in gauge theories with a small number of flavours and colours.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Gauge theories are the only way we know how to describe the fundamental interactions. In spite of all that has been learned regarding such theories, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. In particular, Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD), which is the gauge theory describing the strong interactions between quarks and gluons, continues to pose challenging questions for physicists. Quarks and gluons are confined at low temperature and matter density in the form of hadrons such as protons, neutrons and pions. The origin of confinement within QCD remains unexplained. Our limited progress on this problem is largely due to our ignorance of how to deal with intrinsically non-perturbative regimes of generic gauge theories.The main research objective of the team will be to develop new techniques for the description of both perturbative and non-perturbative regimes of gauge theories and to use these techniques in phenomenological studies directly related to the results of current experiments. The entire project will lead to a deeper understanding of strong interactions and the phase diagram of QCD and QCD-like theories (as function of temperature, matter density, etc.). The confinement mechanism and its relation with chiral symmetry breaking will also be clarified. A detailed knowledge of the QCD phase diagram is essential for a number of physical applications ranging from early universe dynamics to the structure of cold and dense astrophysical objects. A better knowledge of strongly interacting theories is also needed to model possible extensions of the standard model of particle interactions and for solving fundamental cosmological problems. Finally, we need new and general methods to address the strong interaction problem, which is central in virtually all fields of physics.
Original text from CORDIS.
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Data: CORDIS, © European Union