Fisica

The goal of the course is to provide students with a broad and introductory overview on the phenomenology of Hadronic Physics, that is, the description of properties of baryons and mesons (collectively known as hadrons) in terms of the elementary degrees of freedom of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), namely quarks and gluons (collectively referred to as partons). Since QCD is a non abelian gauge theory that exhibits parton confinement at energy scales comparable to hadron masses, Hadronic Physics must rely on suitable mathematical tools to extract  information on the partonic structure of hadrons  from experimental data, especially within the challenging, highly non-perturbative regime of QCD. The course will feature a general overview of the theory of lepton-hadron scattering, evidence of scaling and the emergence of the Parton Model, introducing the concept of partonic density, followed by an overview of key tests of the model in hard processes with and without polarization. Topics such as the EMC experiment and the so-called “spin crisis”, scaling violations and evolution equations, basic notions of the Operator Product Expansion (OPE), the rigorous OPE definition of partonic densities, and several related subjects at the forefront of current research in the field of Hadronic Physics will also be discussed.