[Aperitivo Scientifico] A laboratory for QCD: how to employ LHC to study hadronic interactions

by Valentina Mantovani Sarti (TUM)

Tuesday 24 Jan 2023, 11:00 → 13:00 Europe/Rome

Aula BP-2B Ex Biomedica, Secondo Piano (DIFA Pichat)

by Valentina Mantovani Sarti (TUM)

Please note the unusual date/time.

Improving the knowledge on how the strong interaction acts among hadrons is one of the frontiers in nuclear physics. A large amount of interactions among stable or unstable hadrons have not been measured yet and theoretical calculations with effective lagrangians and/or starting from first principles, with quarks and gluons as degrees of freedom, are still under development and in need of experimental data.
For nucleons, scattering experiments and measurements of nuclei binding energies have been successfully employed in the past to constrain two- and three-body interactions but when hadrons containing at least one strange quark (such as hyperons and kaons) are involved, the experimental access becomes extremely challenging. The unstable nature of hyperon beams makes such measurements very difficult and significantly reduces the experimental data available. 

The strong interaction amongst strange hadrons and nucleons is relevant in many aspects such as the existence of exotic states, as the Λ(1405) molecular state arising in the antiK-proton interaction, and in the possible presence of hyperons in neutron stars.

Indeed, the strong interactions among hadrons, including hyperons, drive the equation of state of dense neutron-rich matter as probably present in the inner core of neutron stars.
 

In this talk we show how with the ALICE experiment we are able to measure hadronic interactions at two- and three-body level by means of two- and three-particle correlations measured in different colliding systems. This experimental technique, known as femtoscopy, represents a perfect tool to access experimentally the strong interaction with an unprecedented precision in a large variety of hadronic systems.
The plethora of results obtained in the last three years has allowed not only to understand better the nature of the strong interaction but also is paving the way to obtain a more realistic equations of state for neutron stars.

The new measurements will be discussed and it will be demonstrated that a new era for hadron physics has been paved with the possibility of measuring in the future also many-body interactions and entering the charm sector.