This project supports a collaboration between Dr. Xiangdong Ji, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College park, Maryland and Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Department of Physics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. The two plan to conduct investigations into hadron substructure and quantum chronodynamics (QCD). They will focus on QCD, the fundamental theory of strong interactions, which determines the structure and properties of hadrons and nuclei. Specifically they will investigate five particular topics: conformal symmetry and high energy scattering, orbital parton motion and nucleon spin structure, transversely-polarized vector meson production and quark helicity-flip off-forward distributions, and the QCD pomeron, low-x physics and diffraction, and quantum computing.
Scope: This project is for support of a potentially important research in nucleon structure, with significant indirect educational benefits. The US PI is a world-class expert who has done pioneering work in this area. Dr. Hoodbhoy is considered the leading expert in Pakistan in this field. He has contributed to research in this area in joint work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This project is expected to result in significant joint scientific publications. The proposal meets INT objective of supporting mutually beneficial international collaboration. This project is being funded jointly by the Division of International Programs and by the Physics Division.
