The Adventure and the Prize

TL;DR

This paper discusses potential polarized proton experiments at Fermilab and their significance for understanding quantum chromodynamics, especially confinement and chiral symmetry breaking, linking experimental proposals with fundamental mathematical problems.

Contribution

It proposes a new experimental program at Fermilab using high-energy polarized proton beams to explore transverse spin phenomena related to fundamental QCD dynamics.

Findings

Potential experiments could shed light on confinement mechanisms.

Connections between spin observables and chiral symmetry breaking are highlighted.

Experimental interpretations relate to solving Millennium Prize Problems.

Abstract

This article presnts a condensed summary of separate, overlapping, presentations to the Workshop on Polarized Drell-Yan Physics (Santa Fe, NM, Oct. 31-Nov.1, 2010),the GHP 2011 Worshop (Anaheim, CA, Apr.21-27, 2011) and the Transversity 2011 Workshop (Veli-Lozinj, Croatia, Aug. 29-Sep. 2, 2011) during which the author advocated for a potential experimental program based at Fermilab utilizing high-intensity polarized proton beams of 120 GeV/c to 150 GeV/c. Some possible experiments in this program are introduced briefly. Interpretations for these potential experiments are presented in terms of a hypothetical solution to the "Quantum Yang Mills Theory" problem posed by Arthur Jaffe and Edward Witten as one of the seven Millenium Prize Problems in Mathematics issued by the Clay Mathematics Institute. These comparisons illustrate the close connection between transverse spin observables and the complex dynamics of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking found in quantum chormodynamics.