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Research InterestsI work with Judith McGovern and Niels Walet at the intersection between particle and nuclear physics. In particular we are interested are in fundamental appraoches to nuclea rphysics and the role played by the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the structure and interactions of nucleons and mesons. The most important of these symmetries of the strong interaction is a chiral symmetry which is respected by up and down quarks (the ones we are made of) because they have very small masses in QCD. The strong attraction between quarks and antiquarks means that "empty" space is filled with a Bose-Einstein condensate of quark-antiquark pairs, which acts like a Higgs field and hides the chiral symmetry. Our work takes advantage of the way pions (the lightest mesons) "remember" this symmetry in their interactions. It makes use of a range of theoretical techniques including effective field theory and the renormalisation group. We are also interested in transitions from ordinary nuclear matter to new phases such as a quark-gluon plasma or a colour superconductor. The plasma is the phase of matter which existed shortly after the Big Bang, and which may be recreated by colliding heavy nuclei together at ultrarelativistic energies. Colour-superconducting quark matter may exist at very high densities in the centre of neutron (or quark) stars. For more on these ideas, see the talk I gave at a UK Workshop on QCD in Nuclear and Hadronic Physics (pdf file, 165 kB). An informal account of chiral symmetry and related ideas can be found in:
Some recent (and not-so-recent) papers on these topics are listed here. My preprints since 1993 are posted on the Cornell e-print archive. A more complete list of my publications can be found on the SLAC INSPIRE database. Conferences Conferences and workshops organised by the group:
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13th September 2019
Up: Theory group