On 20 March 2024, at 4:00 PM, the Association of Young Scientists and Specialists at JINR invites everyone interested to the next seminar that will take place in the Big Hall of the JINR Scientists’ Club (6, Joliot-Curie street, left side).

DLNP JINR Deputy Director Dmitry Naumov will deliver his lecture “Quantum field theory: endless torment and a breath of hope”. This is the second lecture of the “From revolution to evolution in modelling physical reality” series.

Quantum field theory (QFT), a new theory that combines quantum mechanics and special theory of relativity (STR), seemed to be an “ugly duckling”. Although QFT successfully explained the nature of force, the new theory suffered from computational “diseases.” It predicted absurd infinities for observable quantities. A breath of hope came with the explanation of the Lamb shift. Soon, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman built the first successful version of QFT, quantum electrodynamics (QED). The discovery of the renormalisation group not only made it possible to get rid of the infinities, but also gave a new deep understanding that mass and electric charge are not constants. New experimental discoveries have indicated that QED should be generalised to include strong and weak interactions. It was completely unclear how to do this.

There will be a small coffee break at 4:00 PM, which precedes the seminar. The report will start at 4:15 PM.

To join the event on 20 March, please fill in the form via the link not later than 4:00 PM 19 March.

Records of AYSS seminars are available via the link