Nuclear Physics

• What are the properties of matter a couple of microseconds after the Big Bang?
• What is the origin of the proton’s spin?
• How are the building blocks of matter (quarks and gluons) distributed inside nucleons and nuclei? What are their dynamical properties?
• How does the weak interaction mediate the parity violating hadronic interactions?
• What are the roles of cosmic ray radiation and its impact on the Earth’s environment (e.g., climate and health)?

RHIC creates a hot dense medium known as the quark-gluon plasma by colliding ions at relativistic speeds. Our early universe experienced this state of matter immediately after the Big Bang. Studying the QGP provides insight into the behavior of the nuclear strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. We are currently building a new experiment known as sPHENIX.

GSU Nuclear Physics Group is leading on a project for developing novel and portable cosmic ray muon telescopes for measuring cosmic ray muon flux variations at global scale and exploring the associated applications including cosmic ray muon tomography, space and earth weather monitoring, etc.

The EIC would be a particle accelerator that collides electrons with protons and nuclei to produce snapshots of those particles’ internal structure—like a CT scanner for atoms. The electron beam would reveal the arrangement of the quarks and gluons that make up the protons and neutrons of nuclei. The force that holds quarks together, carried by the gluons, is the strongest force in Nature. An EIC would allow us to study this “strong nuclear force” and the role of gluons in the matter within and all around us.

Nucleon-Nucleon (NN) weak interaction is another interest of the GSU Nuclear Physics Group. We use the Parity Violation (PV) neutron spin rotation to probe the NN weak interaction.  After ~ 40 years of study, hadronic weak interaction is not understood (data & theory are inconsistent).  NN weak interactions are needed to interpret PV in atomic, nuclear and hadron physics; and sensitive to q-q correlation in nucleon.