The JLab Theory Center is engaged in a range of outreach activities aiming to disseminate its specific knowledge and research to the broader academic community, attract and train future generations of scientists, and promote the awareness and understanding of science in society at large. Programs are aimed at university students at the graduate and undergraduate level, K-12 students in local school systems, and social media audiences.
One of the grand challenges of the program to image the nucleon's internal 3-dimensional quark and gluon structure is our ability to transform the observed data, presented as a collection of momentum 4-vectors of the final state particles (collectively called events
Lattice QCD enables the three-dimensional internal structure of hadrons such as the nucleon to be computed from first principles within QCD. The HadStruc Collaboration exploits lattice QCD to calculate the key measures of structure, such as the one-dimensional parton distribution functions (PDFs) and form factors, and the three-dimensional measures such as the generalized parton distributions that enc
Although not the main thrust of its research activities, the Theory Center provides support for experimental programs at Jefferson Lab that perform tests of fundamental symmetries of the Standard Model and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Jefferson Lab Theory Center pursues frontline research in all areas of QCD and hadron physics, commits to the lab mission to provide the theoretical underpinnings of its experimental program, and develops the theoretical tools necessary to extract physics knowledge from the current and future experimental data. Through expertise across a broad range of nuclear physics, Theory Center staff members provide leadership for national and international nuclear physics research efforts.
The Theory Center's current research focuses on the following thrust areas:
