Meson dynamics ((07) M02)

• Subject Area: Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Fields
• Term: from 2012 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 204404729

Unraveling the structure and dynamics of mesons is still one of the fascinating challenges of the study of the strong interaction. In the low-energy regime, the interaction of pseudoscalar mesons (, K, ) among themselves, with vector mesons, photons, and baryons is constrained by spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in QCD in combination with explicit symmetry breaking by the quark masses and their electric charges. This will be experimentally studied with the timelike transition form factor of the ω meson at MAMI and in the channel J/ψ  +-0 at BESIII. On the theoretical side, a consistent quantum field theoretical treatment of the interaction of vector mesons with pseudoscalar mesons and photons will be developed further. The study of “exotic” heavy states in charmonium-like mesons in this project allows to address structure and dynamics beyond the interpretation as conventional quark-antiquark systems.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1044: The Low-Energy Frontier of the Standard Model: From Quarks and Gluons to Hadrons and Nuclei
• Applicant Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
• Co-Applicant Institution: GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH; Helmholtz-Institut Mainz
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Niklaus Berger; Professorin Dr. Miriam Fritsch; Professor Dr. Wolfgang Gradl; Professor Dr. Michael Ostrick, until 12/2015; Professor Dr. Stefan Scherer