Effective Field Theory for Hadronic Physics

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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is currently studying the nature of matter at the smallest experimentally accessible distances. By colliding protons at high energies, physicists probe the details of the physical world at distances of order 1/10,000th the size of the proton, and by studying the debris of these collisions they are able to infer the existence of new subatomic particles and forces, such as the recently-discovered Higgs Boson. Because proton-proton collisions are incredibly complex events, a great deal of theoretical work is required in order to relate the signals measured in detectors to the details of the microscopic physics in the collision. In particular, subatomic particles called quarks and gluons produced in the collisions turn into energetic jets of particles by the time they hit the detectors. Calculating the details of this process, and hence inferring the properties of the short-distance collision from the measurements, is a challenging task.