Elementary Particles, Nuclei and Relativity

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed research involves research in Nuclear Phenomenology, Particle Phenomenology, String Theory and Cosmology. We propose to develop the most general Nucleon -Nucleon parity violating potential using an effective field theory approach. We propose to study virtual Compton scattering, which is an important tool for understanding hadronic structure. This will be done using light-cone methods. We propose to investigate higher-order terms in chiral perturbation theory and diagrams for electroweak processes, such as the so-called penguin diagrams. Numerical lattice gauge calculations are being improved, and can now treat a number of nonperturbative effects, such as QCD corrections to electroweak decays. We propose to use these chiral perturbation theory techniques to augment present lattice gauge calculations. We will also study charm-anticharm meson mixing, a CP-violating phenomenon which is of current experimental interest. We intend to study the fate of tachyonic instabilities in string theory by studying topological solitons for orbifold tachyons.