Contact
Prof. Dr Werner MeyerI
Faculty of Physics and Astronomy
Phone.: +49 234 32 23 561
E-Mail: meyer@ep1.rub.de
Funded since 2004
Link
Analysing the basic elements of the universe
Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 16: Subnuclear Structure of Matter
Analysing hadrons means analysing the universe. Hadrons are elementary particles the most prominent representatives of which, protons and neutrons, the basic elements of the atomic nuclei, also form the stars and the galaxies. They are subject to a strong interaction, the so-called nuclear energy. Hadrons are analysed in the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 16, in which physicists from Bochum cooperate with their colleagues in Bonn (head institution) and Gießen.
Two different groups of hadrons can be distinguished, according to their composition of either two or three quarks. But the research of the last couple of years has been finding new kinds of hadrons over and over again: in most cases they are theoretically calculated in advance and then they are finally detected with a particle accelerator. Thus the calculations of the RUB researchers have contributed significantly to the discovery of the socalled Theta+ (five-quarks-particle), which attracted great attention internationally. The researchers have also calculated radii, charge and magnetisation distributions, quark and antiquark distributions of the momentum and the angular momentum of other hadrons, which could be verified experimentally.
Centre for experiments of the SFB is ELSA, the electron accelerator at the Institute of Physics at the University of Bonn. The scientists of the three universities carry out fundamental research here and use a number of detectors to analyse the inner structure of protons and neutrons in detail.
