Physics and Astronomy Colloquium: Toward an Understanding of Hadron-Hadron Collisions: From Feynman-Field to the LHC

Speaker: Prof. Richard Field, University of Florida
Title: Toward an Understanding of Hadron-Hadron Collisions: From Feynman-Field to the LHC

Abstract: In 1973 I received a two-year post-doctoral position in Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics at CALTECH in Pasadena, California. When I arrived at CALTECH I met Richard Feynman and we began a quest to understand the source of the high transverse particles (pions and kaons) that had just been observed at the ISR proton-proton collider at CERN at a center-of-mass energy of W = 53 GeV. Feynman-Field phenomenology resulted in predictions of large transverse momentum particle and "jet" production in hadron-hadron collisions based on the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The goal was to show that QCD was indeed the correct theory of the strong interactions.

We constructed the "Field-Feynman" fragmentation model of how the outgoing partons produced hadrons, which for the first time allowed us to simulate, on an event-by-event basis, everything that occurs in a hadron-hadron collision. In 1998 I joined the CDF Experimental Collaboration at Tevatron (W = 1.8 TeV) at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. My plan was to produce data that could be used to improve the QCD Monte Carlo models we use to simulate hadron-hadron collisions. Later, as a member of the CMS Experimental Collaboration at the LHC (W = 13 TeV) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, I continued this plan. The QCD Monte Carlo models have improved greatly over the years and QCD has become an integral part of the "Standard Model." From 7 GeV pions to 1 TeV jets. It has been a wonderful journey from the "old days" of Feynman-Field collider phenomenology to the Tevatron and the LHC. I would like to share some of this journey with you.