Oct 24, 2022 07:00:00

What is a project that attempts to display protons in 'animation'?

Familiar substances are made of atoms, and atoms are composed of nuclei and electrons. Furthermore, the nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons, and protons are made up of three particles called 'quarks'. A project to unravel the secrets of protons by expressing in 'animation' the results of hundreds of experiments on protons, which are quantum-mechanical entities and whose shape cannot be clearly grasped. is underway.

Inside the Proton, the 'Most Complicated Thing' Imaginable | Quanta Magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-the-proton-the-most-complicated-thing-imaginable-20221019/

In 1967, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center observed that ``when an electron hits a proton, the way it bounces changes,'' and announced research results that protons contain a large number of substances. After that, similar experiments were conducted many times, and it is said that it became possible to infer the interior of the proton from various angles by collecting the scattered particles and how they bounced off. The existence of the aforementioned quarks was also suggested by using higher energy electrons and high energy colliding accelerators.

Protons are thought to be made up of two ``up quarks'' and one ``down quark'', and attempts are being made to guess the shape of the proton by moving the quark model. The animation of the quarks that make up the proton is shown below, and you can see how the quarks move by clicking the image.

In experiments conducted using the Hadron Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA), it was confirmed that electrons bounced back from quarks with low momentum and their antimatter, antiquark vortices. The image below shows it in animation.

This explains that quarks are bound together by ``force-conducting particles'' called gluons, and each quark and gluon has three ``color'' charges, red, green, and blue. The theory that colored particles naturally attract each other, form groups such as protons, and add their colors to become neutral white, is said to have come to be called 'quantum chromodynamics'.

However, due to the existence of quarks, which can be difficult to detect, and the complexity of calculations, the nature of protons remains unknown. The next-generation experiment will start up an electron-ion collider in the 2030s, and will continue what HERA left unfinished, taking high-resolution snapshots to enable the creation of the first 3D reconstruction of the proton. They say they are planning.