TOMSK, Feb 7 – RIA Tomsk. Researchers of the experimental TOTEM installation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) found evidence for the existence of a new form of matter – odderon; Tomsk State University (TSU) is the only participant of the experiment from Russia, the press service of university reports on Wednesday.
It is explained that the participants of the TOTEM experiment study the processes arising at the collision of protons, which form new forms of matter, such as the Higgs boson, or new bound states called odderons (which comes from English "odd"). These are the so-called bound states of matter with an odd number of gluons (which comes from English "glue") which "stick together" quarks (fundamental particles) in protons and neutrons.
"Until now during the experiments in the interaction of protons, formation of matter forms consisting only of an even number of gluons was observed. The last measurements for the first time demonstrated the evidence of an exchange of an odd number of gluons", – is said in the report.
It is specified that the TOTEM experiment is organized by an international group of scientists - about 100 physicists from 20 scientific institutes of eight countries. TSU in TOTEM is represented by the leading scientific employees of the Laboratory of Experimental High Energy Physics Vladimir Ivanchenko and Yevgeny Chernyaev."The data obtained can not be explained by any of the currently existing theoretical models of hadron elastic interaction, since they assume that it is associated with the exchange of two or more even number of bound gluons. If the existence of an odderon is not confirmed, the results of the TOTEM are the discovery, which replenishes the treasury of knowledge about the behavior of elementary particles", – the press service quotes Chernyaev.
CERN-EP-2017-321 and CERN-EP-2017-335 preprints with the latest results of TOTEM measurements are available on the CERN server, now publications on this topic are being prepared for physical journals.