Quantum Chromodynamics
Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between the quarks and gluons that make up hadronic matter. As part of the GlueX experiment in Hall D of the Thomas Jefferson Nuclear Accelerator Facility, faculty members Gan, Black and Daniels test QCD using meson photoproduction.
Neutrino Physics
The 2015 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for the discovery that neutrinos, ghostly, weakly-interacting fundamental particles long thought to be massless, oscillate between flavor states and therefore are actually massive. This surprising discovery has important ramifications for the Standard Model.
What are the masses of the neutrinos? Are neutrinos their own antiparticles? Is lepton number conservation violated?
To address these questions, Professor Daniels searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay, a rare hypothetical nuclear process, as part of the EXO-200 and nEXO collaborations and carries out related nuclear structure measurements at the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory (TUNL).
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information
Professor Moorad Alexanian's research is concerned with quantum entanglement, which lies at the foundation of quantum mechanics. Erwin Schrödinger highlighted entanglement with his puzzling cat thought experiment and Einstein deriding it as "spooky action at a distance."
Nonetheless, quantum entanglement has been verified experimentally and is essential for quantum information communication and processing protocols in quantum cryptography, dense coding, teleportation and entanglement swapping, which can be used to realize quantum repeaters.
Entanglement can be achieved via two interacting quantum systems or by an appropriate joint measurement of two systems.
In the development of quantum algorithms and quantum information processing, one attempts to generate states that are maximally entangled in order to maximize the advantage of nonclassical correlations between parts of a given quantum system.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy and Astrophysics is the study of phenomenon ranging from the planets in our solar system to the largest cosmic megacities, galaxy clusters. Since Astrophysics is uniquely intertwined with Cosmology, the study or the origins of the Universe, Dr. Jesse Golden-Marx and his research group combine aspects of both of these dynamic fields to better understand the nature and evolution of the Universe. We are now living in an exciting era with new and upcoming telescopes and surveys, such as the European Space Agency's Euclid Space Mission, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. As a result, Astrophysics and Cosmology are entering a golden era of big, high-resolution data. Moreover, the high resolution of these telescopes will now allow astronomers to study the faint light and structures previously unobservable outside of the local universe.
This research group uses observations from Euclid (currently) and Rubin (in the near future) to study the intersection between Galaxy Evolution, Cosmology, and data science. Specifically, we will use observations of massive galaxies (predominately Bright Cluster Galaxies (BCGs)) within galaxy clusters and the faint and diffuse Intracluster Light (ICL) that surrounds BCGs to characterize how these most massive galaxies in the universe evolve over cosmic time. Moreover, the central location of BCGs within galaxy cluster environments means that observations and statistical studies of these galaxies can inform our understanding of the nature of dark matter within galaxy cluster environments. Additionally, because we now have large samples of thousands of observations, we take advantage of statistical approaches and techniques to characterize BCGs and ICL as statistical populations.
Dr. Golden-Marx is working with collaborators from around the world as part of Euclid and LSST on projects relating to these topics. He welcomes students who are interested in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, or data science approaches to scientific data to join his dynamic research group.
