Novel phenomenological applications of light-front QCD

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This research helps with our better understanding of the structure of matter. The bulk of matter is made of quarks, which in the Standard Model (SM) are the fundamental constituents of hadrons like protons and neutrons. Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the widely accepted theory of interactions between quarks which proceeds via the exchange of gluons, the elementary force carriers of the strong force. According to QCD, the attractive force between quarks increases with distance and therefore quarks are confined within bound states with other quarks and antiquarks. Indeed, theoretical calculations based on QCD in long quark distance domain is only possible through numerical simulations and the regular application of the perturbation technique cannot work. Consequently, to get analytical insight into the properties of the bound state of quarks, one has to resort to models for QCD in the strong coupling regime. One such models is based on a duality proposed around two decades ago by Juan Maldacina who showed the mathematical equivalence of a strongly interacting theory in 4-dimensonal space-time to a weakly interacting gravitational theory in a higher dimensional space-time. This model is referred to as light-front holographic QCD. My proposed research is to use this model to make predictions for a wide variety of physical observables which are/will be observed experimentally and compare notes with predictions obtained from other widely used models. Our theoretical predictions are relevant to many experimental facilities around the world like, the BELLE II detector at SuperKEKB Collider (located at KEK, Japan), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which its Run III is expected to start in 2021 as well the past experiments at HERA at DESY (located in Germany) and JLab in the US. Through this exercise, we learn how holographic QCD should be augmented when applied to different "flavors" of quarks and at the same time find out the model dependence of our theoretical calculations. The latter is an important piece in testing the SM and looking for signals of new physics and is beyond the domain of SM. This research involves students and contributes to the training of the next generation of Canadian scientist by expanding their knowledge of subatomic physics and elevating their computational skills. In this way, we create opportunities for young researchers to participate in a field that they have previously felt formidable and out of reach.