Hadron Structure and QCD

Our goal is to explore the internal structure of hadrons in terms of their elementary constituents, i.e., quarks and gluons. We aim at answering fundamental questions such as: How does confinement of quarks and gluons arise inside the nucleon at different resolution scales? Can we make a “tomography” of the nucleon? Where do the mass and spin of the nucleon come from?

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is perturbatively calculable only at high resolution scales that are much smaller than the nucleon size. Hence, we use both theoretical and phenomenological approaches: we use experimental measurements to deduce information on quark and gluon distributions inside the nucleon (which are not calculable in QCD). We make use of the tools of perturbative QCD to study high-energy scattering processes. We describe the main features of nucleon structure using models that effectively replace nonperturbative QCD.

Contact person: Barbara Pasquini

Members of the Group: A. Bacchetta, B. Pasquini, M. Radici, F. Delcarro, L. Rossi, A.C. Alvaro, L. Polano