CIPANP 2009 explores areas of common interest between nuclear physicists, high energy (particle) physicists and astrophysicists. These areas range from studies of the strong interactions that bind nuclei together to physics of the very early Universe and include such topics as neutrinos, hadron physics, spin physics, heavy ion physics, QCD and heavy flavor physics. The Conference papers include descriptions of searches for "new physics", phenomena that cannot be accounted for by current theories.
This first open access volume of the handbook series contains articles on the standard model of particle physics, both from the theoretical and experimental perspective. It also covers related topics, such as heavy-ion physics, neutrino physics and searches for new physics beyond the standard model. A joint CERN-Springer initiative, the "Particle Physics Reference Library" provides revised and updated contributions based on previously published material in the well-known Landolt-Boernstein series on particle physics, accelerators and detectors (volumes 21A, B1,B2,C), which took stock of the field approximately one decade ago. Central to this new initiative is publication under full open access
With ever increasing computational resources and improvements in algorithms, new opportunities are emerging for lattice gauge theory to address key questions in strongly interacting systems, such as nuclear matter. Calculations today use dynamical gauge-field ensembles with degenerate light up/down quarks and the strange quark and it is possible now to consider including charm-quark degrees of freedom in the QCD vacuum. Pion masses and other sources of systematic error, such as finite-volume and discretization effects, are beginning to be quantified systematically. Altogether, an era of precision calculation has begun and many new observables will be calculated at the new computational facilities. The aim of this set of lectures is to provide graduate students with a grounding in the application of lattice gauge theory methods to strongly interacting systems and in particular to nuclear physics. A wide variety of topics are covered, including continuum field theory, lattice discretizations, hadron spectroscopy and structure, many-body systems, together with more topical lectures in nuclear physics aimed a providing a broad phenomenological background. Exercises to encourage hands-on experience with parallel computing and data analysis are included.
The principal goals of the study were to articulate the scientific rationale and objectives of the field and then to take a long-term strategic view of U.S. nuclear science in the global context for setting future directions for the field. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter provides a long-term assessment of an outlook for nuclear physics. The first phase of the report articulates the scientific rationale and objectives of the field, while the second phase provides a global context for the field and its long-term priorities and proposes a framework for progress through 2020 and beyond. In the second phase of the study, also developing a framework for progress through 2020 and beyond, the committee carefully considered the balance between universities and government facilities in terms of research and workforce development and the role of international collaborations in leveraging future investments. Nuclear physics today is a diverse field, encompassing research that spans dimensions from a tiny fraction of the volume of the individual particles (neutrons and protons) in the atomic nucleus to the enormous scales of astrophysical objects in the cosmos. Nuclear Physics: Exploring the Heart of Matter explains the research objectives, which include the desire not only to better understand the nature of matter interacting at the nuclear level, but also to describe the state of the universe that existed at the big bang. This report explains how the universe can now be studied in the most advanced colliding-beam accelerators, where strong forces are the dominant interactions, as well as the nature of neutrinos.
