CERN finds gluons behaving strangely deep inside atomic nuclei

A CERN experiment has given physicists a much sharper look at how gluons behave inside atomic nuclei, providing new evidence that could help distinguish between two competing explanations of what happens at extremely small scales.

University of Kansas physicist Daniel Tapia Takaki played a leading role in the study, which was conducted as part of the ALICE experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider and published in Physical Review Letters .

The researchers report the first multidimensional measurement of incoherent J/ (pronounced "JAY-sigh") photonuclear production that tracks both interaction energy and momentum transfer. Together, those measurements allow scientists to examine how gluons are distributed inside atomic nuclei with unprecedented detail.