Office: Swain West 228
E-mail: lichten@indiana.edu
Phone: (812)-855-2329 Fax: (812)-855-5533
I taught both graduate and undergraduate physics courses at Indiana University
between 1963 and 1993. I retired in January, 1994.
Since retiring, I taught a graduate course in elementary particle physics
in the fall semester of 1997 and shared teaching the second semester of
a
general physics course in the spring semester of 2002.
My research is in elementary-particle theory, and nearly all my recent
work has been within the framework of the standard model of elementary particles.
I have been particularly interested in the properties of hadrons, a difficult
problem in the standard model because making predictions about hadrons requires
solving QCD (quantum chromodynamics) in the non-perturbative regime.
Rather than solving QCD numerically on a lattice, a procedure that requires
large amounts of computer time, I construct simplified models that I can
solve easily but that incorporate some of the features of QCD. As an example,
if I take a simple quark model approach, I can regard a meson as a state
of a quark and antiquark bound in a potential. This problem is not hard to
solve. Similarly, I can regard a baryon as a bound state of three quarks,
or even simpler, as a bound state of a quark and a diquark. Recently, I have
treated so-called exotic hadrons made of more than three quarks.
More information about my research