Nuclear Parton Distribution Functions

• Applicant: Dr. Ji Young Yu
• Subject Area: Nuclear and Elementary Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Fields
• Term: from 2006 to 2010
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 23200025

Parton distribution functions (PDFs) are of supreme importance in contemporary high energy physics. Firstly, they encode fundamental information on the structure of hadrons. Moreover, PDFs are needed for the computation of any high energy reaction (at HERA, RHIC, Tevatron, LHC, . . . ) involving hadrons in the initial state. It is the purpose of this research project to perform a detailed global analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions (NPDFs) in leading order and next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD, including a statistical analysis of their uncertainities. A primary goal is to better understand the physical origin of differences between nuclear and free nucleon PDFs. As an important application, it is intended to use the NPDFs to compute neutrino nucleus cross sections in the deep inelastic domain along with a reliable quantitative estimate of their uncertainties. This will contribute to an improved theoretical understanding of neutrino interactions in the few GeV region and will help to assess the impact of cross section uncertainties on the determination of subdominant oscillation parameters in operating and future long baseline neutrino experiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Fredrick I. Olness