Abstract:
Physicists seek to answer the fundamental question: How is the nucleus of an atom held together to build the matter we see? In the lower energy picture, we describe the nucleus in terms of its protons and neutrons and their exchange of mesons. In the higher energy picture, composite protons and neutrons (composed of quarks and gluons) interact through quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The residual of this interaction is the strong nuclear force. Through QCD we can describe the proton as a superposition of quark-gluon states that can include states of different sizes. This description naturally implies that bound protons can be different from free protons and allows for color transparency phenomena (whereby the constituent quarks are in a smaller-sized configurations). Using the high intensity electron beam at Jefferson Lab, we study the connection between these descriptions in order to understand how the strong force binds the nucleus together. I will present insights from recent experiments and future directions using nuclei as a laboratory to search for evidence of small size configurations and their contributions to our fundamental understanding of how the strong force manifests across scales.