Affiliation: Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC) CSIC / University of Valencia

Fields or areas of research Hadron Physics

I got my PhD in Physics at the University of Murcia at the end of 2012. Since then I have had several postdoctoral positions: IFIC (CSIC - U. de Valencia), IPNO (CNRS - U. de Paris XI), U. de Murcia, and currently in the Theoretical Division of JLab (Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility), one of the most important experimental facilities for Hadron Physics.

My research lines fall within the field of Theoretical Hadron Physics. Hadrons are particles made up of quarks and antiquarks, which are the most basic components of the surrounding matter. For instance, neutrons and protons inside atomic nuclei are composed of three quarks of type u (up) or d (down). My research follows essentially two lines. One of them consists in understanding the production mechanisms for hadronic final states in the reactions that experimental groups study in particle accelerators/colliders, such as JLab in the United States or LHC-CERN in Switzerland. In the other research line we try to understand through theoretical models the different hadronic resonances that can be formed in these final states. The objective is to know its fundamental parameters (for example, its mass), but also its nature, that is, to know if these resonances are so-called conventional states (formed by a quark and an antiquark, or by three quarks), or they are instead exotic states: hadronic molecules, tetraquarks, pentaquarks, glueballs, hybrids, etc. Although some states have been discovered whose nature is known to be unconventional (that is, they are undoubtedly exotic), we do not know exactly which category (from the above list) they fall into, so more research in this field is indeed needed.