CRC 1660: Hadrons and Nuclei as Discovery Tools

Basic data for this project

Description

The proposed CRC will allow for an interdisciplinary approach to the search of new physics phenomena and it will significantly sharpen our understanding of strong interaction processes. By bringing together the fields of atomic, nuclear, and hadron physics, this project holds a unique discovery potential along three main research pillars. In the first research pillar, low-energy high-intensity experiments are taking a center stage in the search for new particles and interactions beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. The goals in these experiments are to search for dark sector and dark matter particles, to perform the world’s best measurement of the weak mixing angle at low energies, and to scrutinize the presently observed deviations between theory and experiment in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. The second research pillar aims to significantly improve on the precision in our understanding of hadronic processes to enable the interpretation of the next generation of long-baseline neutrino experiments and the next generation of spectroscopy experiments on muonic atoms. In both areas, an order of magnitude improvement in the hadron and nuclear physics input is called for. The third research pillar will complement the new developments in the field of multi-messenger astronomy by performing a new generation of high-precision experiments in low-energy nuclear physics aimed at a quantitative understanding of the nuclear equation of state, extracting reaction rates entering nucleosynthesis networks, and advancing nuclear physics through high-precision tests in few-body systems. The very broad combined expertise in atomic, nuclear and hadronic physics within this CRC will allow for a significant impact on all the above research avenues simultaneously. The outstanding opportunities enabled by the new local MESA accelerator, which is coming online, as well as at MAMI (Mainz), BESIII (in China), and PSI (in Switzerland) facilities, combined with the very strong interplay between the theoretical and experimental groups, will foster unique physics and methodological connections between the different research fields and create a favourable environment for discoveries.