The goals of this project are to advance the theoretical understanding of hadrons and light nuclei using effective theories that are rigorously consistent with the fundamental theory of the strong interactions, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). In single hadrons, the project will continue the development of improved chiral effective theoretical methods in baryons by applying in the low-energy regime a framework known as the 1/N expansion of QCD. By studying excited baryons in this framework, this research relevant for the analysis of current experimental results on baryon resonances from various facilities, including the Jefferson Laboratory, and it can also be applied to connect with recent results of Lattice QCD calculations of the excited baryon spectrum. In few-body physics, the research is focused on applying the combined chiral effective theory and 1/N expansion to study the nucleon-nucleon potential, with possible extensions to few-body currents.
This project will focus on the fundamental properties of QCD as manifested in the context of hadronic and nuclear systems. An important mission of this research concerns the education and training of undergraduate and graduate students at Hampton University, one of the historically black institutions. The PI's long-standing involvement with the theoretical and experimental programs at the Jefferson Laboratory provides students with unique learning and research opportunities at one of the premier experimental facilities in the world.
