Strong Interactions in the Standard Model: Massless Bosons to Compact Stars

Dear Colleagues,

The Standard Model of particle physics (SM) was formulated roughly fifty years ago, and it was completed in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN. Yet, despite the SM’s enormous array of successes, it still presents an array of unsolved problems. Primary amongst them is the following question: Can the SM explain the origin of nuclear size masses? This is the puzzle of emergent hadron mass (EHM), whose solution is supposed to lie within quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the SM’s strong-interaction component. EHM could provide the unifying explanation for all of the SM’s remarkable nonperturbative phenomena, including confinement and absolute stability of the proton, the proton’s mass and radii, the lepton-like scale of the pion mass and its hadron-like radius, and so much more, including the character and composition of dense astrophysical objects. Of course, as a source of mass, the EHM interferes constructively with a range of Higgs boson effects. For instance, such feedback sets the kaon apart from the pion and separates heavy quark systems from those containing only light quarks. Presented with such an array of interrelated phenomena, whose implications reach throughout nature, scientists from around the world have responded with huge investments of personnel and resources in strong interaction experiment and theory. Reflecting the scope of the associated endeavors, this volume collects a diverse range of perspectives on the problem of EHM, its observable manifestations, and the approaches and tools that are today being employed to deliver an insightful understanding and, perhaps, finally, a solution.

Dr. Minghui Ding
Prof. Dr. Craig Roberts
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Schmidt
Guest Editors

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