Instructors:
-
Prof. Abhay Deshpande (Nuclear)
- Email: abhay.deshpande "at" stonybrook.edu, Office: Physics C-101, Phone: 632-8109
- Prof. James
Lattimer (Astronomy)
- Email: lattimer "at" mail.astro.sunysb.edu, Office: ESS 449, Phone: 632-8227
- Prof. Patrick
Meade (Particle)
- Email: patrick.meade "at" stonybrook.edu, Office: MT 6-104, Phone: 632-7969
- Prof. Nicolas Tsoupas (Accelerator)
- Email: tsoupas "at" bnl.gov, Phone: 631-344-4979
Meeting Schedule:
Objectives:
- Obtain experience in giving oral presentations.
- Learn some of what is happening in these fields.
- Learn about research activities at Stony Brook.
- Attend colloquia and learn about presentation/clarity.
Topics:
For electronic article access, try the university license
to APS Journals (Physical Review)
or the
electronic preprint ArXiv;
for searching published work in astronomy, the
ADS abstract
service is excellent. For particle physics, the web sites of large experiments
can be helpful in finding publications.
Rules:
- Each student will give one 30 minute talk, with
5-10 additional minutes to allow for questions and discussion
during and after the talk.
- Make sure to stay close to the allotted time, but don't exceed the time
limit. Be aware that if you speak for significantly longer than the alloted
time, you may be interrupted and not be allowed to finish your presentation.
This is a constraint that is consistent with the practices at many conferences.
- Make sure you have a goal with the presentation: present the essential
(new) physics, provide connections (previous data/theory), present the
underlying concepts, and give a compact summary.
- Your fellow students must be able to learn something (new) from your
presentation: make sure you start at a general level of knowledge.
- Avoid long and complex derivations; provide the essence or the outline of
derivations if needed
- You are responsible for researching the literature and contacting the local
experts.
- Instructors or experts may be consulted on the organization, layout, and
content of your presentation at any time, but you will be solely responsible
for the final product. Materials used in presentations should be drawn mostly
from published materials (journal papers, preprints, etc.). Photos, figures,
plots and other information can be obtained from web pages. However, students
are strongly discouraged from directly using other people's transparencies,
including those from an expert adviser.
- Students are strongly encouraged to arrange a practice
talk in front of fellow students a few days preceding their
presentation. Practice the correct presentation: attitude,
position, volume, speed, and timing!
- See the
list
of suggestions for hints to help prepare slides for a good presentation.
- You are encouraged to provide an electronic version of the talk in PDF to
be posted on the web page.
- Scheduled talks may not be postponed.
- Students must meet with an instructor and turn in an electronic
abstract at least one week preceding the talk.
- Prepare a APS formatted abstract with the proper references. Note
that one may now go to the APS website and submit an abstract to the
"Test" meeting. To do this, go to the
abstract submission page, click
"Start Abstract Submission," select TEST meeting, and follow the
instructions. If you go all the way through and submit, you
can then select "view submission file" to see the LaTeX. You
may then use that file to produce an abstract for the class.
(Here is an example LATEX
source that will build with
apsab.sty)
- Students must attend all talks; attendance will be taken.
- Students are encouraged to ask questions and give criticisms of talks.
Active participation will be part of the grade.
Grade:
- Physics content of presentation: 50%
- Presentation quality of the talk: 30%
- Quality of the Abstract: 10%
- Active participation in class discussion 10%
- Attendance will be taken. Unexcused absences will result in a lower grade
- Any excuses (medical or otherwise) are to be documented and discussed with
the instructors in a timely manner.
Standard Syllabus Information:
If you have a physical, psychological,
medical, or learning disability that may impact your course work, please
contact Disability Support Services (631) 632-6748 or http://studentaffairs.stonybrook.edu/dss/.
They will determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate.
All information and documentation is confidential.
Students who require assistance
during emergency evacuation are encouraged to discuss their needs with
their professors and Disability Support Services. For procedures
and information go to the following website: http://www.stonybrook.edu/ehs/fire/disabilities/asp.
Each student must pursue his
or her academic goals honestly and be personally accountable for all
submitted work. Representing another person's work as your own is always
wrong. Faculty are required to report any suspected instance of academic
dishonesty to the Academic Judiciary. For more comprehensive information
on academic integrity, including categories of academic dishonesty,
please refer to the academic judiciary website at http://www.stonybrook.edu/uaa/academicjudiciary/
Stony Brook University expects
students to respect the rights, privileges, and property of other people.
Faculty are required to report to the Office of Judicial Affairs any
disruptive behavior that interrupts their ability to teach, compromises
the safety of the learning environment, and/or inhibits students' ability
to learn.
Topics in Nuclear Physics
- The Phase-Diagram of Nuclear Matter:
- The QCD phase diagram exhibits a large number of different phases
including normal nuclear matter, dense hadron matter, quark gluon plasma,
color super conductors. Discuss the phase diagram and its characteristic
features and their theoretical basis. Explain which parts can be addressed
by which experimental techniques.
(Drees, Shuryak, Hemmick, Teaney,Kharzeev)
- The Perfect Fluid Created at RHIC:
- The hot, dense matter formed at RHIC has shown surprising
properties. It is extremely opaque to colored probes (quarks and gluons)
traversing it. The matter thermalizes incredibly quickly and behaves
like a liquid with extremely small viscosity. Screening of the color
charges does not appear to be complete. Similar properties are observed
in strongly coupled plasmas, and are being studied using the
correspondence of string theory and quantum field theory. Discuss either
the experimental evidence for strongly coupled plasma formation or
theoretical studies of its properties utilizing AdS/CFT correspondence.
(Zahed, Teaney,Kharzeev Shuryak, Jacak)
- Quenching of Jets and Heavy Quark Energy Loss:
-
Jets of particles in the final state of a collision arise from quarks or
gluons scattering with large momentum transfer. In heavy ion collisions
the quarks or gluons lose a large amount of energy in the dense medium
as they traverse it. Even the very heavy charm quarks experience huge
energy losses, which is quite surprising. Furthermore, the deposited
energy appears to create a sound wave in the medium. Discuss the
results, focusing on either theoretical or experimental aspects.
(Drees, Jacak, Shuryak, Teaney,Kharzeev)
- J/Psi suppression, a signature for deconfinement of
quarks:
- In collisions of heavy ions fewer J/psi mesons are produced than expected
from summing independent nucleon-nucleon collisions. This was predicted as a
signature of quark-gluon plasma formation. Briefly describe the concept of
quark gluon plasma. Discuss the mechanism of suppression of the J/psi and
recent data. (Drees, Hemmick)
- Electromagnetic Radiation from Hot, Dense Nuclear Matter:
-
Enhanced radiation of lepton pairs from the hot and dense reaction
volume created in collision of nuclei was observed at CERN and now also
at RHIC. The data indicate melting of the QCD vacuum and therefore the
presence of a QCD phase transition. Show the experimental results and
interpretations.
(Drees, Hemmick, Zahed)
- Statistical Mechanics of Nuclear Collisions:
- The number and spectra of particles produced in heavy ion collisions is
well described by statistical emission from an equilibrated gas of hadrons.
Data indicate that hadrons decouple at a temperature near 170 MeV, near the QCD
phase transition between quarks and hadrons. Describe the measurements,
statistical analysis and interpretation. (Shuryak, Jacak,
Hemmick)
- Particle Interferometry:
- The space-time extent of the collision region formed in nuclear reactions
can be studied by measuring the interference between two identical outgoing
particles. Measurements at RHIC show a surprise: the sizes are no larger than
at lower energy, even though RHIC produces more particles and more explosive
collisions. Explain the technique and discuss the recent results. (Teaney,Kharzeev, Jacak,
Hemmick)
- Collective Flow of Quark Gluon Plasma
-
Heavy ion collisions produce high pressure and hydrodynamic flow,
resulting in non-isotropic particle emission patterns. The anisotropy at
RHIC is large and indicates rapid equilibration and very low viscosity
followed by hydrodynamic expansion. Discuss the phenomenon and how
plasma parameters are extracted from it.
(Teaney,Kharzeev, Shuryak, Hemmick)
- Strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma(s)
- The AdS/CFT correspondence and applications to strongly coupled plasmas.
(Teaney,Kharzeev, Shuryak)
- Color Superconductivity and QCD at High Density
-
Quark matter at high density is believed to display a number of
interesting phases, with quark Cooper pairs condensing like in an
ordinary superconductor. Those pairs are diquarks which are already
observed inside the ordinary nucleons.
(Zahed, Shuryak)
- Where are the quarks inside nuclei?
- Discuss scattering of leptons from nuclei and dilepton production via the
Drell-Yan process to probe quark and antiquark distributions. What do we learn
from such data about the quark structure functions, and what is the effect of
the nuclear medium? (Deshpande, Jacak, Marx)
- Where is the spin of the proton?
-
Results from deep inelastic scattering experiments using longitudinally
polarized electrons and polarized protons indicate that the quark spin
contribution to the spin of the proton is essentially zero. This result
is commonly referred to as the “Spin Crisis”. The gluons contribution
to the proton spin is studied with polarized protons at RHIC. Review the
DIS and polarized proton experiments and results.
(Deshpande, Shuryak, Qiu)
- What is the role of anti-quarks in determining the proton spin?
-
Polarized deep inelastic scattering experiments can not distinguish
between quark
and anti-quark spin contributions, since the interactions carriers
(virtual photons, in DIS) do not carry color charge. A recent Fermilab
experiment suggests that the anti-down and anti-up quarks have
substantially different linear momentum distributions at high energies,
indicating that the spins carried by quarks and anti-quarks probably do
not cancel. Review these results and discuss how RHIC spin program at
BNL plans to measure the anti-quark (ubar and dbar) spin contributions
separately.
(Deshpande, Shuryak, Qiu)
- What is the transverse spin structure of the proton?
-
Results from *transversely* polarized proton-proton and electron-proton
scattering experiments have measured large left-right asymmetries in
particle
production in the final state. A comprehensive understanding of these
observations is key to the three dimensional structure of the proton,
including
quark and gluon orbital angular momentum contribution to the proton
spin. Review these experimental observations and discuss attempts to
understand the transverse spin structure of the proton at Brookhaven
or/and at Jefferson Laboratory.
(Deshpande, Jacak, Shuryak, Qiu)
- Measurements of the Electron Neutrino Mass:
- Discuss the various experiments to measure electron neutrino masses from
beta-decay endpoint measurements and double-beta decay. Give the latest results
and discuss the relation of these results to the recent observations of
neutrino oscillations. (Shrock, Jung)
- Super-Heavy Nuclei:
-
Well-founded nuclear model calculations have predicted a stable
(lifetimes between 1 and 100 years) island of very heavy nuclei near
Z--114 and A--300. A few such nuclei have recently been detected.
Discuss the theoretical basis for the super-heavy island and the
possible approaches to it by use of heavy ion reactions. Discuss the
results from recent experiments.
(Jacak)
- Nuclear Liquid-Gas Phase Transition:
-
Under the influence of heat and pressure nuclear matter is expected to
undergo a liquid-gas phase transition. This is the boiling point of
nuclear matter. Report on recent experiment showing fragmentation of
nuclei into large clusters (droplets) at intermediate energies (several
100 MeV/u) which are interpreted in terms of such a phase transition.
Discuss the theoretical connection of these experiments with a phase
transition from a nuclear liquid to a nuclear gas phase.
(Jacak)
- Carbon 14 Dating:
-
Radiometric dating with carbon 14 is a widely accepted process for determining the age
of plant and animal remains. The utility of carbon 14 for radiometric dating follows
from the slow decay rate of carbon 14, which has only recently been understood.
(Hemmick)
- Topology, Spin and Symmetry in nucleons and nuclear collisions:
-
(Deshpande,Kharzeev)
