>The dynamics of quarks and gluons can be described perturbatively in hard processes thanks to the smallness of the strong coupling constant at short distances, but the spectrum of stable hadrons is affected by non-perturbative effects and cannot be computed from the fundamental theory. Though lattice QCD attempts this by discretising space–time in a cubic lattice, the results are time consuming and limited in precision by computational power. Predictions rely on approximate analytical methods such as effective field theories.

I'm glad this was mentioned, non-perturbative effects are not well understood and this is a big part of why it's worthwhile to study bound states of the strong force.

  • evanb
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Give LQCD practitioners resources on the scale of the experiment, the computations will get faster!

I'm not sure what they mean by "Predictions rely on approximate analytical methods such as effective field theories." The predictions of LQCD are ab initio. Sometimes we fit EFTs to LQCD results, that's true. But EFTs are under control and have quantifiable uncertainties, they're not just willy-nilly approximations.

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May be referring not to LQCD relying on approximate analytical methods but some of the other non-perturbative methods? Example would be trying to apply homotopy analysis method (HAM) or a related transform to whatever field equations to make some semi-analytical predictions.
I assume that if we ever unify QCD with General Relativity, the resulting theory would be able to predict these hadrons from first principles?
No. The reason perturbation theory doesn’t work as well for QCD as it does for QED is because of two reasons:

1. The coupling constant of QCD is much higher than QED so contributions to the overall result from Feynman diagrams that have more vertices (the multiplicative factor of each element in the sum is proportional to the power of the number of vertices) don’t vanish as quickly as they do for QED

2. The gauge bosons in QCD (i.e. gluons) themselves have colour charge whereas those in QED (i.e. photons) do not have electrical charge.

You can't give a definite no to that because, since gravitons have stress-energy and are non-perturbative, a field theory advance that worked for them could also help with the strong force.
I mean sure, since we don't know what GR + QFT could look like, the result could be just about anything and somehow give us nice closed solutions to QCD problems. But I don't feel like that line of reasoning is particularly useful.
AdS/CFT is already an example of an approach to gravity yielding an approach to strongly coupled field theories.
It's an approach to a hypothetical other type of universe's gravity..
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> the resulting theory would be able to predict these hadrons from first principles?

Not sure how bringing GR into the fray would help solve what essentially seems to be a computational complexity problem. Might actually make things worse.

It's not a computational complexity problem, it's an undefinedness problem. Proving that the lattice simulations converge has been estimated as well beyond this century's mathematics by the pair of people (Glimm and Jaffe) that have done the most to study it. In any case it is beyond today's.
Are there a lot of missing overbars in this article, or some other typographic marker for antiquarks? I assume the hexaquark descriptions early on are supposed to be (using Q for q-overbar) "QQQqqq or qqqqqq", where it reads to me as "qqqqqq or qqqqqq".
They are there in the print version (page 26) https://cerncourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/CERNCouri...
“Other manifestly exotic hadrons followed, with two exotic hadrons Tcccc(6600) and Tcccc(6900) observed by LHCb, CMS and ATLAS in the J/ψJ/ψ spectrum. They can be interpreted as a tetraquark made of two charm and two anti-charm quarks – a fully charmed tetraquark.”

Not sure if it was deliberate or not, but yeah.

I really read this title wrong
I'd wager that most people did but then corrected themselves.
When the LHC got built I kept waiting for a newspaper to make that mistake. One eventually did.
  • thiht
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What’s the mistake?

EDIT: got it, hardons

Also "Exotic", "Bestiary".
As I wrote somewhere else, I rather like the cuddly hadrons from The Particle Zoo: https://www.particlezoo.net/collections/particle-packs
Whenever I come across such news, it seems like we are still far from grasping the complete picture. It's akin to gazing at the sky without a telescope and assuming we have seen all the stars in the universe.

I speculate that in the coming decades or centuries, a new instrument may enable us to delve deeper into the atom and reveal that what we perceive now is merely a minuscule fraction of the whole picture.

Perhaps the notion that the subatomic world is as vast as the universe, as stated by Richard Feynman when he said "There’s plenty of room at the bottom.", holds more truth than we realize.

> Perhaps the notion that the subatomic world is as vast as the universe, as stated by Richard Feynman when he said "There’s plenty of room at the bottom.", holds more truth than we realize.

That's true and he knew this even at the time of this famous lecture. He was talking about that there is a plenty of room at the room for us to explore how can we use atoms in synthetic chemistry not into exploring the fundamental particles inside them . When we are talking about particle physics we are basically talking about the successor field of nuclear physics. It studies the interactions and particles inside the sub-atomic structure. Feynman's most interesting work - parton model- was one of the first innovative theoretical work in QCD and was one of milestone of development and validation of the quark model.

The idea that protons, neutrons, and other hadrons are composed of fundamental particles called quarks that come in six -flavors- (up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom) and possess fractional electric charges. These quarks are bound together by the strong nuclear force, mediated by particles called gluons, and must combine in specific ways to form observable particles (mesons or baryons). One day this was a wild theory and needed a lot of work on validating this model experimentally.

"also implies the existence of a Tbb state, with a bbud quark content, that should be stable except with regard to weak decays"

Can someone explain this to me?

Tcc(3875)+ can decay to a D0 and a D+, yes? And this is a strong decay?

I guess the reason Tbb doesn't have an equivalent strong decay to B mesons because of the sign difference -- that is, B0 and B+ would have anti-bs, not bs; and anti-B0 and anti-B+ would have negative charge?

And so the only major decay pathway is for the b itself to decay to a K+ (plus lepton noise), giving a temporary bu\s\u\d pentaquark, that then has uninhibited decays?

I guess what I'm asking is... is this the right way to think about this?

In strong decays, the products will contain the same quarks and antiquarks that have existed in the original particle, possibly with the addition of one or more quark-antiquark pairs that have been generated during the decay.

In weak decays, one or more of the original quarks or antiquarks will be converted in a quark or antiquark with a different flavor, which is a process that has a low probability of happening, so the weak decays happen less frequently, therefore the hadrons that can decay only through weak decays have a lifetime that is many orders of magnitude greater than the hadrons that can decay through strong decays (or electromagnetic decays, i.e. annihilation of quarks with the corresponding antiquarks).

D+ is c quark + d antiquark, D0 is c quark + u antiquark

Tcc(3875)+ is 2 c quarks + d antiquark + u antiquark

Therefore the 4 quarks/antiquarks in Tcc(3875)+ are the same as the 4 quarks/antiquarks in D0 + D+.

So this is a strong decay, because no quark or antiquark is converted into another kind of quark or antiquark.

For the Tbb- tetraquark, its composition would allow a similar strong decay into two b-quark + u or d antiquark hadrons, except that its binding energy is so great that the mass of the Tbb- tetraquark is smaller than the sum of the masses of the hadrons that would be produced during a strong decay (it is also smaller than the sum of masses of the hadrons that could be produced by an electromagnetic decay, see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026931... ).

This forbids the strong decay and the electromagnetic decay, so the only admissible decay must be weak, where one of the b quarks will be converted into another kind of quark.

The strong decay would just be forbidden from conservation of energy. If the mass of the Tbb state is less than the sum of the B+ and the B0 masses, then that decay isn't allowed.
gratuitously suggestive title is gratuitous. :P
Can anyone recommend a book or other resource for a lay person to understand this?
I thought that "The Particle Zoo: The Search for the Fundamental Nature of Reality" by Hesketh did an excellent job of explaining without dumbing down to the point of meaninglessness.
  • ggm
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Since the way we find these is to smash the larger atomic constructs with (relatively) huge amounts of energy I do wonder how much we can know of their ground state, motion & behaviour absent those forces.
  • FabHK
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Do we have anomalies accumulating here that indicate the early phase of a scientific revolution in Thomas Kuhn's terminology, that is, a replacement of the standard model/QCD? Or is it still "so far, so good"?
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Do you feel like those two options would cover all possible scenarios for "the state of the field"?
Well, either the standard model is right, or it isn't, isn't it? They asked for indication of an "early phase", not that we're ready to throw the standard model out (which, boringly, held up extremely well so far).
The standard model Lagrangian is a sum of many terms, and changing one of them, adding a new one or even a radical revolution in our understanding of the results of integrals taken over it would not count as a Kuhnian revolution. Physics has not had one of those since Newton.
  • Keysh
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Physics has obviously had Kuhnian revolutions since Newton, the emergence of relativity and quantum mechanics being two obvious examples.
Physics advances like geography: there's a New World in the Americas, but Libson is still there. Newtonian mechanics remains as the consequence of relativity and quantum mechanics where we "live," and the existence of other things under different conditions doesn't change that. Kuhnian revolutions involve the old models being discarded.
  • Keysh
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From Chapter VII of Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (https://www.lri.fr/~mbl/Stanford/CS477/papers/Kuhn-SSR-2ndEd...):

"If awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of new sorts of phenomena, it should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory. On this point historical evidence is, I think, entirely unequivocal. The state of Ptolemaic astronomy was a scandal before Copernicus’ announcement. Galileo’s contributions to the study of motion depended closely upon difficulties discovered in Aristotle’s theory by scholastic critics. Newton’s new theory of light and color originated in the discovery that none of the existing pre-paradigm theories would account for the length of the spectrum, and the wave theory that replaced Newton’s was announced in the midst of growing concern about anomalies in the relation of diffraction and polarization effects to Newton’s theory. Thermodynamics was born from the collision of two existing nineteenth-century physical theories, and quantum mechanics from a variety of difficulties surrounding black-body radiation, specific heats, and the photoelectric effect.4 Furthermore, in all these cases except that of Newton the awareness of anomaly had lasted so long and penetrated so deep that one can appropriately describe the fields affected by it as in a state of growing crisis."

Later in the same chapter, he gives three examples of crises that led to paradigmatic revolutions: "a particularly famous case of paradigm change, the emergence of Copernican astronomy."; "the crisis that preceded the emergence of Lavoisier’s oxygen theory of combustion"; and "the late nineteenth century crisis in physics that prepared the way for the emergence of relativity theory."

Kuhn absolutely considered relativity and quantum mechanics to be examples of paradigmatic revolutions, just like Newtonian mechanics in the 17th Century and the earlier Copernican revolution.

If you want to argue that Kuhn was wrong about history, then you can do that (and I would at least partly agree); but if you want to claim Kuhn didn't say what he actually said, that's a different matter.

If you read Kuhn's book, you'll see he uses quantum mechanics as one of his examples of a scientific revolution. I mean, you might think he's wrong, but that's stretching the definition of "Kuhnian Revolution" a bit. And sure, Newtonian mechanics might come out in the classical limit, but the probabilistic aspect of QM alone represents a completely different way of viewing the universe than the Newtonian model.
I do think Khun is wrong under his own definitions. Quantum amplitudes are over mechanical possibilities, and they no more overturn them than icing overturns cake. :-)
  • ordu
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I think you make a mistake when you look at physics with your modern eyes. Knowledge should make you see more, but this is the case when it makes it hard to see the history. Try to look at it with eyes of 19 centuries physicist.

Physics was all deterministic and objective. And then comes QM saying that there is no determinism and about the role of an observer, and comes GR saying there is no objective observer, because different observers can't agree about time and length.

I heard that physics professors in 19 century told their students that they had chosen the wrong career because physics was almost done. There were slight difficulties with electromagnetism, but they surely is going to be resolved in coming years. And then all that shiny and almost complete physics was blown up because very foundations of it were destroyed.

It was a paradigm shift. If it wasn't then what is? Copernicus? But the Ptolemaic astronomy did work and it works today. With its limitations of course, but it works. You can calculate positions of heavenly bodies with epicycles. Galilean laws of motions? But the laws of Aristotle works no worse then when Aristotle invented them.

We did "discard" newtonian gravity and mechanics in favor of sr,gr and qm as fundamental theories. They still give good approximations over a wide range of conditions so we keep using them for calculations.
I wouldn't call it discarded if it's still used for everything it used to be used for, while also being a logical implication of the new theories
it’s a necessarily a logical implication that this theory would be a good approximation at certain scales just by the sheer fact that it used to be a theory that fit observations at some point. That is also true of “completely incorrect” theories like heliocentricity.

In the case of NM we happened to have something that is often also computationally simple and efficient so we keep using it, but it is by no means a “correct theory”. just a useful model that is still useful.

i daresay it will continue to be useful for some things even if we eg discover that we are living in a simulation and manage to escape! As long as some part of us will continue to experience this reality it will be useful - the math is simple and gives good approximations in many cases.

maybe a clearer case - the “planetary” model of electrons floating around the nucleus is useful in chemistry and is still taught in grade school, but i would definitely call it “discarded” in that no one doing research in the field would use that - it’s just a useful model for “engineering” practitioners
I wouldn't say it's useful in chemistry. Chemistry at any basic level is deeply concerned with the shape of the probability fields of electrons around a nucleus since it's the dominant contribute to the shape of molecules and strength of bonding.

EDIT: Like ironically I would say the planetary model has 1 unique utility, which is that for hydrogen-NMR it's useful to just assume that 1 electron is producing a little magnetic field like a Bohr model atom.

im less interested in having a pedantic argument online regarding exact meaning of useful and exactly for what. the bottom line with this example is that its a useful model for some things and therefore still is taught in science classes today as a “correct” description just like NM, both of which which are not, fundamentally.

Take it or leave it :-)

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> The challenge of understanding how quarks are bound inside exotic hadrons is the greatest outstanding question in hadron spectroscopy.

They must be more like knots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knot_(mathematics)

Quarks are small masses, gluons are strings connecting them, and the whole thing is in a rapid periodic motion.

> Like Mendeleev and Gell-Mann, we are at the beginning of a new field, in the taxonomy stage, discovering, studying and classifying exotic hadrons.

The chemistry of matter that's smaller than protons and larger than electrons is indeed a missing piece. But the real breakthru will be discovering a membrane that's impenetrable to those multiquarks.

  • m3kw9
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I shouldn’t have skimmed the tittle
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Now that's a headline that you don't want to type wrong.
“All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” -Ernest Rutherford

Is this stamp collecting? Do these exotic hadrons mean anything?

That quote isn't real; it was a metaphor Rutherford purportedly once used, posthumously recalled by John Bernal. It was incorrectly converted into a direct quotation by later writers. But even then, you're misunderstanding the quote, by which is meant that physics has supremacy and all other sciences are collecting specific instances of physics; the LHC is decidedly doing physics.

However, even if you take the quote to mean what you imagined, it is unnecessarily cynical. LHC has advanced our understanding of physics.

Learning about the properties of exotic hadrons clarifies our understanding of nuclear forces.
>Do these exotic hadrons mean anything?

Given their horribly short lifespans, probably not much other than the fact that they manage to exist for however short a time might vindicate QFT a tad more (I'm assuming that QFT somewhat predicts their likelihood to show up).

Or maybe they'll bring a deeper understanding of the strong force.

But generally speaking, I feel you: lots of work and energy spent to create these exotic things, but that may or may not have an actual use or even meaning.

A lot of science is like this these days, it looks like we're hitting exponentially diminishing returns (as in: useful applications) in some areas of science.

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My dyslexic brain: "Exotic whatnow?"
  • thih9
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There is a nonzero chance this was intentional. There is a long tradition; an article about the “Queen Mary” vessel being cleaned was allegedly titled “Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped”.
  • pvg
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They didn't intentionally make up the common particle physics term 'hadron'.
  • vvpan
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Same...
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"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive"

Please go to reddit if you want to post easy one liners for quick karma.

If you’re going to quote the guidelines at least do it with the appropriate context.
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They do, but you usually need to put some effort in.
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