Research Field

Direction 1: What Does the Science of Aliens Look Like?

Existing scientific theories have been developed by humans over thousands of years of exploration. The research group is interested in the question: Are human scientific theories unique? If humanity were to start over, or in an alien civilization, would similar theories be established?

It is obviously impossible for humanity to start over, and waiting for aliens is not realistic. In order to answer this question, the research group is constructing an AI scientist to establish scientific theories from scratch based on experimental data. In this process, the AI scientist has no prior knowledge of physics, does not understand what force is, what mass is, what acceleration is, etc., but it needs to discover physical laws similar to F=ma.

The short-term goal of the research group is to reproduce the theories of classical mechanics and relativity theory (or obtain equivalent formulations); the long-term goal is to completely reproduce various known scientific theories including quantum field theory, and to enable the AI scientist to automatically discover corresponding natural laws in any given environment, providing a new paradigm for scientific exploration.

Direction 2: Why Can't We See Quarks?

In environments with electromagnetic interactions, neutral particles (such as hydrogen atoms) and charged particles (such as electrons) can be directly observed in experiments. However, in environments with strong interactions, only color-neutral particles (such as protons and neutrons) can be observed experimentally, and quarks and gluons with color charge cannot be directly observed. This phenomenon is called quark confinement or color confinement, and understanding it is one of the seven $1 million Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Prize Problems.

In the early universe or near high-energy particle collision points, a large number of quarks and gluons are produced. Why do they have to evolve into color-neutral hadrons? How do they evolve? These are some of the questions that interest the research group.

The research group mainly focuses on the heavy quarkonium, the simplest system in strong interactions, to study the laws of evolution from quarks to hadrons, and to understand the mechanisms of hadronization and color confinement.

Direction 3: How to Solve Quantum Field Theory?

Quantum field theory has become a fundamental tool in physics after more than half a century of development. It has gradually permeated into many fields such as particle physics, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, playing an increasingly important role. Considering that Newtonian mechanics based on the absolute spacetime view and deterministic paths dominated the world for over 200 years, it can be believed that quantum field theory based on the relativistic spacetime view and probability amplitudes is still in its adolescence. We expect that quantum field theory will shine brightly in scientific research in the next hundred years, crossing many disciplines and exerting unforeseen powerful effects.

Since physics is an experimental science, calculations based on quantum field theory that can be compared with experimental results are extremely important now and in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, there are currently very few observables for which people know how to calculate based on quantum field theory, and more observables for which people have no idea how to solve quantum field theory, which greatly limits the application of quantum field theory. The question that interests the research group is: For any given physical problem, how to solve quantum field theory and obtain any desired accuracy?

Solving quantum field theory can be done perturbatively and non-perturbatively. In terms of perturbation, the research group has developed a method that can in principle calculate to any order of perturbation theory. In the future, a set of fully automated programs for calculating perturbation theory to any order will be written, greatly reducing the threshold for using field theory, and solving important phenomenological problems related to precise measurements in particle physics. In terms of non-perturbation, the research group will explore new non-perturbation methods to expand the range of problems that quantum field theory can solve.