How Strong Is the Strong Force?
A recent study published in Nature has significantly reduced the uncertainty surrounding the strong coupling constant in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This improvement in precision helps physicists better predict particle interactions at high-energy colliders.
Why it matters
Refining the precision of the strong force constant is essential for identifying new physics and ensuring the accuracy of theoretical predictions at the Large Hadron Collider.
Of the Standard Model’s three gauge couplings, the one between quarks and gluons is by far the least well known. Harvey Meyer recounts the decades of lattice QCD behind its recent determination to five parts per mille.
The force between two quarks in a near-miss collision is of the same kind as that between two electrons, but far more intense. It is also known far less precisely. While the fine-structure constant of electromagnetism has been measured to better than one part in a billion, the strong coupling α s is only known to one in a hundred.
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