arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Chris Quigg.
The 4th International Symposium on the History of Particle Physics spanned two decades, from approximately 1980 to 2000. In this opening keynote lecture, I survey developments in particle physics from the prehistory of the $J/\psi$ discovery to the early nineteen-eighties. I offer context for the contributions that follow in the symposium program.
The chance observation of a novel traveling wave in a canal led over time to the formulation of a nonlinear wave equation -- the Korteweg--de Vries equation -- that describes strikingly robust disturbances now called solitons. The figure of an isolated soliton corresponds to a reflectionless potential that supports a single bound state in the one-dimensional Schr\"odinger equation. An appropriate combination of individual solitons yields a symmetric reflectionless potential that supports multiple bound states. Thus, the KdV equation opens the path to solving the inverse scattering problem for a collection of bound states. Applied to the quarkonium spectra, this formalism allows the construction of reflectionless approximations to the confining potentials that account for the force between quarks, and to tests of the flavor-independence of the interquark interaction.
Global celebration greeted the 2012 discovery at CERN's Large Hadron Collider of a particle that matches the textbook description of the Higgs boson. That achievement validated a remarkable chain of theoretical reasoning that combined the prescriptive notion of electroweak gauge symmetry with a simple, but \emph{ad hoc}, embodiment of spontaneous symmetry breaking. It was made possible by generational triumphs of accelerator art and experimental technique, and by human resourcefulness and collaboration on a global scale, all sustained by the enlightened support of many governments and institutions. Some imagine that, once the keystone of the standard model of particle physics has been set, our subject is over. Others worry that we may be at an impasse because no comparable wonders have appeared, leaving us without well-defined clues to a more complete paradigm. I am neither so readily satisfied nor so {easily} discouraged: we have so much more to learn! This essay surveys many questions that, taken together, constitute an inspiring array of opportunities to enhance our understanding of the physical world.
Origins of contemporary $B$-physics. Mesons with beauty and charm. Stable tetraquarks? Flavor and the problem of identity. Top matters. Electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs sector. Future instruments.
Memorial sessions celebrated Leon Lederman, Helen Edwards, and Burton Richter at the April 2019 Meeting of the American Physical Society in Denver. In the session entitled Honoring Leon Lederman, Sally Dawson gave an overview of Leon's scientific career, Marge Bardeen reviewed his work in science education, and I spoke of his years as Fermilab Director. This essay is drawn from my lecture.
Using a newly developed interquark potential, we tabulate values of the radial Schr\"{o}dinger wave function or its first nonvanishing derivative at zero quark--antiquark separation, for $c\bar{c}$, $c\bar{b}$, and $b\bar{b}$ levels that lie below, or just above, the flavor threshold. These quantities are required inputs for evaluating quarkonium production cross sections.
The $B_c ^+$ family of $(c\bar{b})$ mesons with beauty and charm is of special interest among heavy quarkonium systems. The $B_c ^+$ mesons are intermediate between $(c\bar{c})$ and $(b\bar{b})$ states both in mass and size, so many features of the $(c\bar{b})$ spectrum can be inferred from what we know of the charmonium and bottomonium systems. The unequal quark masses mean that the dynamics may be richer than a simple interpolation would imply, in part because the charmed quark moves faster in $B_c$ than in the $J/\psi$. Close examination of the $B_c ^+$ spectrum can test our understanding of the interactions between heavy quarks and antiquarks and may reveal where approximations break down. ...
In the summer of 1918, Emmy Noether published the theorem that now bears her name, establishing a profound two-way connection between symmetries and conservation laws. The influence of this insight is pervasive in physics; it underlies all of our theories of the fundamental interactions and gives meaning to conservation laws that elevates them beyond useful empirical rules. Noether's papers, lectures, and personal interactions with students and colleagues drove the development of abstract algebra, establishing her in the pantheon of twentieth-century mathematicians. This essay traces her path from Erlangen through G\"ottingen to a brief but happy exile at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, illustrating the importance of "Noether's Theorem" for the way we think today. The text draws on a colloquium presented at Fermilab on 15 August 2018.
Particle accelerators and their detectors are the world's most powerful microscopes. They enable us to inspect the constituents of matter at attometer scales, study matter under unusual conditions, and concentrate extraordinary amounts of energy into tiny volumes to create new forms of matter and initiate new phenomena. The progress of particle physics and of accelerator science and technology go hand in hand. I look to the past, present, and future, raising questions that we would like to answer about nature along the way.
For very heavy quarks, relations derived from heavy-quark symmetry imply novel narrow doubly heavy tetraquark states containing two heavy quarks and two light antiquarks. We predict that double-beauty states will be stable against strong decays, whereas the double-charm states and mixed beauty+charm states will dissociate into pairs of heavy-light mesons. Observing a new double-beauty state through its weak decays would establish the existence of tetraquarks and illuminate the role of heavy color-antitriplet diquarks as hadron constituents.
For very heavy quarks $Q$, relations derived from heavy-quark symmetry predict the existence of novel narrow doubly heavy tetraquark states of the form $Q_iQ_j \bar q_k \bar q_l$ (subscripts label flavors), where $q$ designates a light quark. By evaluating finite-mass corrections, we predict that double-beauty states composed of $bb\bar u \bar d$, $bb\bar u \bar s$, and $bb\bar d \bar s$ will be stable against strong decays, whereas the double-charm states $cc \bar q_k \bar q_l$, mixed beauty+charm states $bc \bar q_k \bar q_l$, and heavier $bb \bar q_k \bar q_l$ states will dissociate into pairs of heavy-light mesons. Observation of a new double-beauty state through its weak decays would establish the existence of tetraquarks and illuminate the role of heavy color-antitriplet diquarks as hadron constituents.
Opening Lecture at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study Program on High Energy Physics Conference, January 18--21, 2016.
The first run of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN brought the discovery of the Higgs boson, an apparently elementary scalar particle with a mass of 125 GeV, the avatar of the mechanism that hides the electroweak symmetry. A new round of experimentation is beginning, with the energy of the proton--proton colliding beams raised to 6.5 TeV per beam, from 4 TeV at the end of the first run. This article summarizes what we have learned about the Higgs boson, and calls attention to some issues that will be among our central concerns in the near future.
The discovery of the Higgs boson is a major milestone in our progress toward understanding the natural world. A particular aim of this article is to show how diverse ideas came together in the conception of electroweak symmetry breaking that led up to the discovery. I will also survey what we know that we did not know before, what properties of the Higgs boson remain to be established, and what new questions we may now hope to address.
We consider diverse examples of science goals that provide a framework to assess luminosity goals for a future 100-TeV proton-proton collider.