Physics Department Summer Lecture Series
"Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) as a many-body theory: An existential tale in four acts"
Presented by Raju Venugopalan, BNL
Tuesday, July 16, 2019, 12:30 pm
Small Seminar Room, Bldg. 510
Hosted by: Mary Bishai
QCD, our nearly perfect theory of the strong interaction, is also deeply profound because all phenomena are emergent features of the many-body dynamics of the quark and gluon fields and the vacuum of the theory. This talk on many-body QCD is organized as a play in four acts: i) Origins, mysteries, symmetries ii) The power and the glory of QCD iii) Surprises from boiling the QCD vacuum in heavy-ion collisions: a) why the world's hottest fluid, albeit also being its most viscous, flows with almost no resistance b) a possible unexpected universality between the hottest and coldest fluids on earth c) What magnetar strength magnetic fields created in heavy-ion collisions may reveal about the topology of the QCD vacuum iv) Looking ahead to the Electron-Ion Collider: what the ultimate IMAX experience may reveal of QCD's mysteries