9315143 Mueller This award supports a two-year collaborative research project between Professor Berndt Mueller, Department of Physics, Duke University, and Professor Hisakazu Minakata, Department of Physics, Tokyo Metropolitan University. The primary purpose of the project is to study QED (quantum electrodynamics) of strong external fields and its ultimate goal is to resolve the puzzle of peak structure observed in the GSI experiments. Professor Alan Chodos of Yale University and Professor Yee Jack Ng, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will also participate in the project. The investigators will study several aspects of the QED vacuum in the presence of a strong external field: (1) collective modes in the QED vacuum? (2) chiral transition in the QED vacuum? and (3) Dyson equation approach. With the beginning of the operation of the APEX experiment at the ATLAS facility at Argonne National Laboratory and the resumption of experiments at GSI, interest in the physics of QED in strong external fields is growing again. The international collaboration will contribute to the development of these experiments, as the collaborators bring varying and mutually supportive individual expertise to the effort. ***
