Betsy Beise, University of Maryland and National Science Foundation
Strange and Not So Strange Things about the Proton
Physics Division Colloquium - 21 Oct 2005

It has been over 60 years since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Otto Stern for the discovery that the proton has an anomalously large magnetic moment, nearly three times what one expects from a spin-1/2 point particle. This was one of the first hints of the underlying quark-gluon structure of the protons and neutrons that make up the bulk of the visible mass of our universe. The now well-established theory of Quantum Chromodynamics describes the strong interaction between quarks and the gluons that bind them, and accounts for many of the observed bound states that are seen in nature. But there are still many unanswered questions, such as how the electromagnetic properties of hadrons arise in these bound states. I'll focus on recent results from a series of parity violation experiments that aim to determine how strange quarks contribute to the proton's charge and magnetism.

ANL Physics Division Colloquium Schedule