Exotic Hadrons: What's New in the Old Spectroscopy?

Wed., Feb. 26, 2014 1:30 p.m. - Wed., Feb. 26, 2014 2:30 p.m.

Location: LB 126

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICISTS LECTURE TOUR

In the last ten years there has been an explosion of newly discovered exotic mesons that do not fit into our current understanding of QCD, the theory of the strong interactions. The speculation is that we've discovered new forms of hadronic matter; hadronic molecules, tetraquarks and mesons with excited gluonic degrees of freedom. To understand the issues I'll start with an introduction to the standard model of elementary particle physics and Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong interactions, and describe our current understanding of hadrons and the pressing questions in strong interaction physics. I will then survey the recent experimental results that are challenging our models of hadrons, the exotic explanations proposed to reconcile theory and experiment, and how we can distinguish between the different theoretical interpretations. I will finish with how we can solve these puzzles through both theoretical and experimental progress in the coming years.

Speaker: Dr. Stephen Godfrey, CAP Lecture, Department of Physics, Carleton University

Bio: Stephen Godfrey is a professor of physics at Carleton University. His research area is particle physics phenomenology - relating theory to experiment. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1983 and was a research associate at TRIUMF, Canada's Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, and at Brookhaven National Lab in the US. He has published widely on signatures and tests for physics beyond the standard model at high energy particle colliders and is considered an authority on meson spectroscopy.