The “strong force” is the most powerful of the four basic forces in nature. It holds together everything we see in the universe, and yet researchers are still trying to understand it.
New Mexico State University physics professor Raza Sufian received a $450,000 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation to pursue his research over the next five years to better understand the gluonic structure of protons and neutrons, the building blocks of the atomic nuclei that make up every star, every planet and every living thing.
“My research is about understanding the glue that binds everything in the visible universe,” Sufian said. “It also asks how massless gluons generate the structure, stability, mass and spin of the proton and neutron that make the matter-dominated visible universe.”
Sufian combines supercomputers, artificial intelligence and quantum computing in his research: Each technology solves a different part of the problem. Supercomputers solve the equations of the strong force from first principles. Artificial intelligence helps uncover patterns and improves the precision of calculations. Quantum computers offer a fundamentally new way to simulate quantum systems that may eventually go beyond the limits of classical computing. Together, they create a powerful new approach to understanding nature.
“Imagine the universe during its very first second after the Big Bang. There were no stars, no planets, no atoms, and no life,” Sufian explained. “Instead, the universe was an unimaginably hot sea of elementary particles. As the universe expanded and cooled, quarks became bound together by gluons, forming the first protons and neutrons that make up the visible university. More than 13.8 billion years later, scientists still do not fully understand exactly how this transformation happened. That mystery lies at the heart of my research. I want to understand the force that transformed the early universe into the visible universe we see today.”
Although gluons are the particles that bind quarks together to form protons and neutrons, they are themselves massless, and yet their interactions generate nearly all of the mass of ordinary matter. Without gluons there would be no atomic nuclei, no stars, no planets and no life. Understanding gluons means understanding why the visible universe exists.
Sufian will work closely with scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory as part of the Electron-Ion Collider experiment, which will allow scientists to explore the internal structure of protons and nuclei with unprecedented precision. Sufian’s research will provide the foundation for the advanced theoretical calculations needed to interpret this extraordinary new data.
The NSF award will allow Sufian to invite two graduate students on the project to train them in high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and modern theoretical physics, while engaging them in one of the most ambitious international scientific programs of the coming decade. These skills prepare students for careers in science, technology and innovation.
“The program also proposes an NMSU-Brookhaven student pipeline through my bridge appointment with Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and ties to the RIKEN-BNL Research Center (a physics research collaboration that joins Japan's national research institute, Rikagaku Kenkyusho, with the United States’ BNL in New York),” Sufian said. “Graduate students would take part in collaborative projects, receive mentorship from national laboratory scientists and complete summer research stays ranging from six weeks to three months.”
Fundamental research is driven by curiosity, but history shows that curiosity often changes the world. Quantum mechanics once appeared to be an abstract theory with no practical application. Today, it underpins computers, semiconductor electronics, lasers, GPS and medical imaging. By combining advanced computation with fundamental physics, this research seeks to answer one of the deepest questions in science while helping develop the computational tools and scientific workforce that will shape the future.
“Ultimately, this work is about more than protons or gluons,” Sufian said. “It is about understanding how the universe evolved from a nearly featureless sea of particles into galaxies, stars, planets and people. It is a journey from the smallest known building blocks of nature to the largest structures in the cosmos, and a reminder that our desire to understand where we come from continues to drive scientific discovery.”
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CUTLINE: New Mexico State University physics professor Raza Sufian received a five-year, $450,000 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.