STRONG-2020 - The Strong Interaction at the Frontier of Knowledge: Fundamental Research and Applications

"The strong interaction is one of the cornerstones of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, and its experimental and theoretical study attracts an active community of about 2500 researchers in Europe. The list of fundamental open questions at the frontier of our current knowledge in the strong interaction is very rich and varied including a full understanding of (i) the partonic structure of hadrons, (ii) exotic hadronic states, properties of (iii) dense quark matter and of (iv) hot and dense quark-gluon plasma, as well as (v) precision tests of the SM. Such research topics are studied experimentally and theoretically mostly via particle collisions at low (a few tens of GeV) and high (up to 14 TeV) energies. Associated developments in state-of-the-art detectors/data-acquisition/beams/targets are required, as well as in theoretical (lattice, effective field, perturbative) calculations. The STRONG-2020 project brings together many of the leading research groups and infrastructures involved today in the study of the strong interaction in Europe, and also exploits the innovation potential in applied research through the development of detector systems with applications beyond fundamental physics, e.g. for medical imaging and information technology. The Consortium includes 44 participant groups, embracing 14 EU Member States, one International EU Interest Organization (CERN), and one EU candidate country. Together with host institutions of 21 other countries, without EU funds benefits, the project involves research in 36 countries. The project is structured in 32 Work Packages (WP): 7 Transnational Access Activities, 2 Virtual Access Activities, 7 Networking Activities and 14 Joint Research Activities. Furthermore, 2 WPs take care, respectively, of the “Management and Coordination” of the project and of “Communication and Outreach".