Dr. Jackson Pybus, Los Alamos National Lab
Abstract:
While the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) describes the fundamental interactions between quarks and gluons, explaining how composite hadrons and nuclei emerge from these dynamics remains a central challenge of nuclear physics. These QCD dynamics are the source of almost all the mass in the visible universe. A large fraction of this results from the energy of the massless gluons that bind quarks together into hadrons.
One way to probe these gluonic dynamics is through interactions with heavy quarks, such as charm or bottom, which interact directly via the exchange of gluons. I will describe recent results from the SRC-CT experiment at Jefferson Lab, where we performed the first measurement of $J/\psi$ photoproduction from nuclei at and below the production threshold. These data provide the first stringent constraints on the gluon structure of bound nucleons in the large-$x$ 鈥渧alence鈥 region. I will then turn to the LHCb experiment, where a technique known as femtoscopy can be used to study the final-state interactions of particles produced in hadronic collisions. I will describe the broad applicability of this technique to study QCD in heavy-flavor systems, including unique sensitivity to the gluon contribution to hadron mass. Together, these approaches provide complementary access to the gluonic structure of hadrons and nuclei.