Research

The strong nuclear force binds together particles called quarks into hadrons, the larger particles that make up nuclear matter. At high energies the interactions between the quarks are weak, and there is a well-established technique known as perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) that deals with such interactions. At lower energies the strength of the interaction grows, and perturbative techniques are no longer applicable.

One proposed model is the AdS/CFT (Anti-de Sitter space/Conformal Field Theory) correspondence, which relates certain strongly-coupled field theories to weakly-coupled gravitational theories with an extra dimension. Calculations that are analytically intractable in the field theory can be related to results from the gravity theory.

I worked on research projects with two undergraduate research assistants in the summer of 2015, and one student in the summer of 2016. This work was funded with funding from Macalester College.

Indiana State SURE program: I worked with a computer science/math major in the summer of 2019 on developing data science methods for analyzing the nuclear physics models that usually has to be done by hand.

See more information about my student collaborations.

For future research opportunities, please send me an email to set up an appointment to discuss the possibilities.