The first talk today was a review of experimental results in light-baryon spectroscopy by Volker Credé. While much progress has been made in this field, in particular in the design of so-called complete experiments, which as far as I understand measure multiple observables to unambiguously extract a complete description of the amplitudes for a certain process, there still seem to be surprisingly many unknowns. In particular, the fits to pion photoproduction in doubly-polarised processes seem to disagree strongly between different descriptions (such as MAID).
Next was Derek Leinweber with a review of light hadron spectroscopy from the lattice. The de facto standard method in this field is the variational method (GEVP), although there are some notable differences in how precisely different groups apply it (e.g. solving the GEVP at many times and fitting the eigenvalues vs. forming projected correlators with the eigenvectors of the GEVP solved at a single time -- there are proofs of good properties for the former that don't exist for the latter). The way in which the basis of operators for the GEVP is build is also quite different as used by different groups, ranging from simply using different levels of quark field smearing to intricate group-theoretic constructions of multi-site operators. There are also attempts to determine how much information can be extracted from a given set of correlators, e.g. recently by the Cyprus/Athens group using Monte Carlo simulations to probe the space of fitting parameters (a loosely related older idea based on evolutionary fits wasn't mentioned).
This was followed by a talk by Susan Gardner about testing fundamental symmetries with quarks. While we know that there must be physics beyond the Standard Model (because the SM does not explain dark matter, nor does it provide enough CP violation to explain the observed baryon asymmetry), there is so far no direct evidence of any BSM particle. Low-energy tests of the SM fall into two broad categories: null tests (where the SM predicts an exact null result, as for violations of B-L) and precision tests (where the SM prediction can be calculated to very high accuracy, as for (g-2)μ). Null tests play an important role in so far as they can be used to impose a lower limit for the BSM mass scale, but many of them are atomic or nuclear tests, which have complicated theory errors. The currently largest tensions indicating a possible failure of the Standard Model to describe all observations are the proton radius puzzle, and (g-2)μ. A possible explanation of either or both of those in terms of a "dark photon" is on the verge of being ruled out, however, since most of the relevant part of the mass/coupling plane has already been excluded by dark photon searches, and the rest of it will soon be (or else the dark photon will be discovered). Other tests in the hadronic sector, which seem to be less advanced so far, are the search for non-(V-A) terms in β-decays, and the search for neutron-antineutron oscillations.
After the coffee break and the official conference photo, Isaac Vidaña took the audience on a "half-hour walk through the physics of neutron stars". Neutron stars are both almost-black holes (whose gravitation must be described in General Relativity) and extremely massive nuclei (whose internal dynamics must be described using QCD). Observations of binary pulsars allow to determine the masses of neutron stars, which are found to range up to at least two solar masses. However, the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov equations for the stability of neutron stars lead to a maximum mass for a neutron star that depends on the equation of state of the nuclear medium. The observed masses severely constrain the equation of state and in particular seem to exclude models in which hyperons play an important role; however, it seems to be generally agreed that hyperons must play an important role in neutron stars, leading to a "hyperon puzzle", the solution of which will require an improved understanding of the structure and interactions of hyperons.
The last plenary speaker of the day was Stanley Brodsky with the newest developments from light-front holography. The light-front approach, which has in the past been very successful in (1+1)-dimensional QCD, is based on the front form of the Hamiltonian formalism, in which a light-like, rather than a timelike, direction is chosen as the normal defining the Cauchy surfaces on which initial data are specified. In the light-front Hamiltonian approach, the vacuum of QCD is trivial and the Hilbert space can be constructed as a straightforward Fock space. With some additional ansätze taken from AdS/CFT ideas, QCD is reduced to a Schrödinger-like equation for the light-cone wavefunctions, from which observables are extracted. Apparently, all known observations are described perfectly in this approach, but (as for the Dyson-Schwinger or straight AdS/QCD approaches) I do not understand how systematic errors are supposed to be quantified.
In the afternoon there were parallel talks. An interesting contribution was given by Mainz PhD student Franziska Hagelstein, who demonstrated how even a very small non-monotonicity in the electric form factor at low Q2 (where there are no ep scattering data) could explain the difference between the muonic and electronic hydrogen results for the proton radius.
The conference banquet took place in the evening at a very nice restaurant, and fun was had over cocktails and an excellent dinner.
