9224138 Bander This three-year award supports U.S.-Sweden cooperative research in theoretical particle physics between Myron Bander of the University of California at Irvine and Hector Rubinstein of the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The objective of their research is to study hadronic phenomena in the presence of very large magnetic fields. These fields may be connected to astrophysical phenomena such as superconducting cosmic strings and are associated with the early universe. Previous collaborative efforts examined instabilities, proton decay in large magnetic fields, and the screening of fields by chiral symmetry breaking. The investigators propose to extend their collaboration to a study of quark spectroscopy in the presence of intense magnetic fields and explore the cosmological consequences of large magnetic fields. They hypothesize that large magnetic fields may occur in the early universe. Their presence could explain how the early universe evolved. The proposed collaboration takes advantage of complementary expertise and will advance fundamental understanding of quantum cosmology and particle physics. ***
