Frank X. Lee

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Frank X. Lee

Professor of Physics

Core


Contact:

312 Corcoran Hall , 725 21st St NW

Areas of Expertise

  • Theoretical nuclear and particle physics

Current Research

My research interest is primarily in the physics of the strong force. The underlying theory is called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) whose fundamental degrees of freedom are quarks and gluons, the basic building blocks of all matter.

We try to answer questions like
1) What is the excitation spectrum of QCD?  (hadron mass spectrum)
2) How rigid is a hadron? How do charge and current distribute inside a hadron? (electromagnetic moments and polarizabilities)
3) What is the nature of the nuclear force? How does a resonance form? (scattering phaseshifts)
4) What is the structure of the QCD vacuum? Vacuum is not empty: it's full of fluctuations of quark and gluon fields that affect hadron properties drastically.

We perform calculations on supercomputers by approximating continuous space-time with a discrete 4-dimensional grid (lattice QCD). More details can be found at this page.

Education

Ohio University, PhD

Publications

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Classes Taught

View classes taught by Frank X. Lee.