Mass, and its origin, are mysterious. We know that the mass
of everyday objects comes from the nucleons (protons and neutrons) in
the nuclei of atoms. Simply count the number of these nucleons and you
have a good idea of an object's mass. According to quantum
chromodynamics (QCD), each proton or neutron consists of three quarks
and some gluons. However, the combined mass of the quarks and gluons is
only 1% of a nucleon's---what gives? Interactions between these tiny
particles are the problem: they look simple in one way, but as
interactions accumulate, supercomputers are needed to keep track of
them. Over the past decade, looking at interactions as a way of
understanding QCD has blossomed into a successful enterprise, solving
old problems in physics and aiding new experiments. Beyond the mass of
the proton (and you), these tools can broadly probe the mysteries of QCD
to address problems in particle, nuclear and astrophysics. |
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Andreas Kronfeld is a scientist in the Theoretical Physics
Department of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab)
and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Study
at the Technical University of Munich. He has been developing new
ideas and methods for understanding QCD since his days as a Ph.D.
student at Cornell University. Prominent among his achievements are
some of the first predictions of QCD interaction rates and the mass of
an exotic particle with both "beauty" and "charm," results which were
subsequently confirmed by laboratory measurements. For these efforts
he has been elected fellow of the American Physical Society and also
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Introduction by Lars Bildsten |