My area of research is in non-perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD for short). QCD is the theory of quarks, the most elementary constituents of matter, and gluons, the massless force carriers. Non-perturbative QCD is used to describe how these particles interact to build all baryons and mesons (collectively known as hadrons), such a protons, neutrons, pions etc. QCD is a rich theory and besides the conventional hadrons it also predicts the existence of exotic states. These are particles that contain one or more massive, constituent gluons.

I am interested in a class of exotic hadrons known as hybrid mesons, mesons composed of a quark-antiquark pair and a constituent gluon. My main goal, under Dr. Swanson’s guidance, is to develop phenomenological models that can describe the mass spectrum, structure and decay modes of these yet-undiscovered hybrids. These models could soon be tested by the experimental programs started by the GlueX collaboration at Jefferson Lab and by the PANDA collaboration at FAIR, in Darmstadt, Germany.

8/2020