Date: 3rd March 2005

Time: 6pm

Venue: LT31, NUS

Title: Forces and Dynamics in the Subatomic Universe

Abstract:

Fifty years ago, Chen Ning Yang and Robert Mills imagined a new kind of force that could affect the particles inside an atomic nucleus. Their force would be a generalization of the notions of electricity and magnetism. In those days, however, experimental observations seemed to give a quite different picture, and the relevance of the "Yang Mills fields" remained obscure. Now, we know that the effects of these fields are quite different from what was thought, and that indeed practically all sub-atomic forces are exactly of the Yang-Mills form. The physical phenomena caused by these forces are rich in structure, and the last 50 years brought us a lot of understanding.