ERC Advanced Grant for Nora Brambilla: Investigating the Properties of XYZ Particles
Prof.
Nora Brambilla is head of the “Theoretical Particle and Nuclear Physics” group at the TUM and MCQST member in the "
Explorative Directions" research unit. The European Research Council (ERC) awarded the researcher an Advanced Grant for her project “EFT-XYZ”. In the project, she will investigate the properties of these XYZ particles, in order to gain new insights into the strong interaction, among other things.
Quarks are the elementary constituents of matter. The properties and interaction of quarks and gluons, which are the carriers of the strong force, are of paramount importance in the quest to understand the behavior of matter at the most fundamental level. The strong force is unique among the four forces of nature for displaying the phenomenon of confinement in the low energy region, making its study particularly challenging. For a long time, quarks were observed to combine in hadrons only as quark-antiquark (mesons, like the pion) or in group of three (baryons, like protons and neutrons that make up the atomic nuclei). In the last two decades new exotic hadrons, called XYZ, have been discovered at particle accelerator experiments around the world. They display striking and unexpected characteristics and their composition in terms of quarks and gluons is still unclear. The research project “EFT-XYZ” by Prof. Nora Brambilla aims at investigating these new forms of matter. With an unprecedented combination of quantum effective field theories and massive computer simulations this research will produce a breakthrough in our ability to calculate the XYZ properties in vacuum and in medium, granting new insight on the fundamental strong force.
About the ERC Advanced Grant
ERC Advanced grants - up to € 2.5 million - provide an opportunity to well established and outstanding scientists of any nationality to pursue innovative, high-risk research that opens new directions in a field of their choice. The ERC supports frontier research that opens new directions and break throughs and encourages unconventional approaches and investigations at the interface between disciplines.
© A. Heddergott/TUM