Department Colloquium | Probing the frontiers of QCD

Zoom link:
https://umich.zoom.us/j/94692610056

High-energy particle accelerators make possible precision studies of the Standard Model of particle physics and beyond. The strong force between quarks and gluons is described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which is responsible for the vast majority of collider events. QCD remains the least well-understood component of the Standard Model since it is strongly coupled at low energies, making it challenging to obtain first-principles predictions. Sprays of nearly collimated particles, called jets, are the direct evidence of processes on distance scales far smaller than the size of an individual proton. The energies and directions of jets and the distributions of particles within them carry the imprint of QCD processes, from micro- to macroscopic length scales. I will discuss recent advances in the study of particle jets using modern methods of quantum field theories, which have helped to establish jets as unique precision tools at collider experiments. These novel ideas in jet identification and probes of jet substructure have been adopted by the experimental collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider, and they provide new research directions for the Electron-Ion Collider, the premier future project in the U.S. Nuclear Physics program. Another frontier at high-energy collider experiments is hadronization, the nonperturbative transition of low-energy quarks and gluons to hadrons. Here, perturbative techniques are generally not applicable, but progress in quantum computing may eventually allow for first-principles simulations. I will present first proof-of-concept studies using existing quantum devices from IBM and outline future directions.