Dj Gross

Biography

Professor David Gross is one of the chief architects of the fundamental theory of the strong force. This theory provides the basis for understanding the properties of strongly interacting particles and all of nuclear physics. The nuclei of atoms are composed of the elementary particles: protons and neutrons held together by the 'strong force'. If one collides these particles one gets a whole spectrum of strongly interacting particles. The proposal that all strongly interacting particles are composed of quarks, whose interactions are governed by the exchange of gluons is called quantum chromo-dynamics (QCD). Both quarks and gluons carry three charges or colours which generalize the notion of the electric charge of an electron. However the force law between quarks is profoundly different from the force law between electrically charged particles. The latter obey Coulomb's inverse square law at long distances, but the interaction grows at short distances. The discovery of Asymptotic Freedom by Gross, Wilczek and Politzer, showed that at short distances, in QCD, the interaction between quarks scales to zero as the inverse logarithm of the distance. He is also one of the discovers of the "heterotic string theory", which has the potential to incorporate all observed elementary particles and their interactions in a unifled framework.

Research Interest

String Theory