Review My 50 Years of Research in Particle Physics
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No. 4] Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B 86 (2010) 293 Review My 50 years of research in particle physics By Hirotaka SUGAWARAÃ1,Ã2,Ã3,† (Communicated by Toshimitsu YAMAZAKI, M.J.A.) Abstract: Some of my work of the last 50 years in the eld of theoretical particle physics is described with particular emphasis on the motivation, the process of investigation, relationship to the work of others, and its impact. My judgment is unavoidably subjective, although I do present the comments of other researchers as much as possible. Keywords: Sugawara construction, Lee-Sugawara relation, supersymmetry CP violation, Kamiokande, population genetics attempt. I would, therefore, rather concentrate on 1. Introduction the motivation for each work and the way the work Until now I have not tried to review what I was accomplished. I would be more than happy if achieved in the eld of particle physics because obvi- this paper were useful to young researchers in pursu- ously objective judgment can and should be done ing their own research activities. only by other researchers in the eld. Nothing is I will rst describe some papers done during my harder than to try to be objective about yourself. PhD student days at the University of Tokyo, then However, I have been asked by the Japan Academy as a postdoctoral fellow in the United States and to do this rather awkward task, so I will present Europe. After that I discuss my work in the 1980’s here a subjective description of my own work start- and 90’s, followed by my current interests. ing from the early 1960’s to the present. I will try, In the early 1960’s theorists became very skepti- as much as possible, to clarify what motivated me in cal of eld theory, especially with regard to under- each stage of my work and how it has been related to standing strong interactions. Dispersion theory was other people’s work. seriously considered as a candidate to replace the en- I want to emphasize the crucial role of informal, tire eld theory scheme; Georey Chew of University collaborative discussion among colleagues in the de- of California at Berkeley was a prime promoter of velopment of new ideas. Ever since my graduate stu- this direction.1) In retrospect I would say that the dent days I have been stimulated and challenged by eorts of S-matrix theorists eventually gave birth to the free exchange of ideas with my colleagues near string theory, due mostly to the discovery of duality and far. I think these free and open exchanges are at the phenomenological level,2) a subsequent paper the foundation of discovery. Many people contribute by G. Veneziano3) and Nambu, and Goto’s imagina- to the development of each new idea. I would like to tive approach to its interpretation.4),5) (Superstring give some examples. I will quote some comments by theory gained momentum at a much later time when other people to avoid excessive subjectivity, but I the cancellation of anomaly was discovered by M. B. doubt if I can be even subjectively successful in the Green and J. H. Shwartz.6)) There was another direction people were pursu- ing during this period; symmetry property of particle Ã1 interactions stemming partly from the problem of JSPS Washington Ofce, Washington, DC, USA. 7)–10) Ã2 Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA. particle classications and partly from the re- Ã3 KEK, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, lated problem of understanding the property of Ibaraki, Japan. weak interactions.11)–13) As a graduate student I was † Correspondence should be addressed: H. Sugawara, JSPS Washington Ofce, 2001 L Street NW #1050, Washington, DC supposed to understand both of these activities and I 20036, USA (e-mail: [email protected]). wrote several papers on these two approaches. I will doi: 10.2183/pjab.86.293 62010 The Japan Academy 294 H. SUGAWARA [Vol. 86, select one paper from the dispersion approach and important task of S-matrix theorists around that three papers from the symmetry approaches. time was to explain the hadronic cross sections due Although the perturbative approach to strong to strong interactions, especially energy dependence interactions was widely disputed during this period, and angular distribution. Experimentally, the total there was also some doubt about the idea of totally cross section was found to be more or less indepen- abandoning eld theory. Therefore, we tried to nd dent of energy for most of the channels and the con- some way, avoiding the perturbative calculations, to cept of Pomeranchuk Regge pole22) was introduced see if eld theory still could be useful in understand- to explain this phenomenon. Generically the Regge ing strong interactions. pole (singularity in the plane of analytically ex- I was very much involved in these kinds of activ- tended angular momentum23)) position depends on ities throughout my entire post-doctoral days in the the energy of the channel under consideration. In United States and Europe. I will choose two papers the description of high energy scattering, the Regge from this period and describe them in more detail. pole in the crossed channel is important and this I might say that the 1970’s was the period of gives the angular dependence of the scattering ampli- complete resurgence of eld theory through the dis- tude. What was found experimentally was that the covery of QCD14)–17) and the Standard Model of elastic scattering angular distribution was energy weak and electromagnetic interactions.18)–20) On the independent, contrary to the hypothesis of moving other hand, S-matrix theory was completely trans- Regge pole. So the question was: ‘‘Is it possible that formed and, combined with supersymmentry idea the pole position of the Pomeranchuk pole is energy and gravity theory, became superstring theory, al- independent?’’ I tried to prove this possibility.24) though its validity still remains to be seen. Through For S-matrix theorists the only physical or the entire period of 1970’s and 1980’s I was inter- mathematical tools allowed were the analyticity and ested in the phenomenological aspect of the Standard the unitarity of the scattering amplitudes. What I Model, especially in its symmetry structure. Its ex- could prove in this paper was that if the pole posi- tension to the grand unication scheme21) was partic- tion as a function of energy has a zero slope at zero ularly attractive in view of its possibility for further energy, then all the higher order derivatives will also generalization towards superstring theory although, disappear. In retrospect, through this work I person- as every researcher in the eld should admit, we are ally learned the power of analyticity when combined still far from its understanding. I will pick two papers with the unitarity, but the impact of this paper must from this category. On the other hand, I did not lose have been rather limited. my interest in superstring theory; what I had done Throughout the 1960’s we saw a rather dra- at earlier stage did have something to do with it, matic increase in the number of ‘‘elementary parti- although that was not my intention when I worked cles’’ or resonances, and it was clear that we should on it. abandon the idea of all these being ‘‘elementary’’. From 1990 to the present time I became very The more practical, but related question was to much involved in managing KEK, then Sokendai classify all these particles and we knew some group and now the JSPS Washington DC ofce, so I have theory must be useful, based on the experience in had much less time for my own scientic activities. other elds such as crystallography. A concrete idea Nevertheless, somehow I succeeded in maintaining a came from the Nagoya Group,8) Gell-Mann, and strong interest in the research and have even broad- Ne’eman.9),10) I got interested in the question of ened my scientic viewpoint by being exposed to what role group theory might play in understanding many dierent, but related elds such as population weak interactions because we knew the weak interac- genetics, environmental studies, brain research etc. I tions do not respect these symmetries. I decided to will conclude by describing some works in which I am study the non-leptonic weak decays of hyperons as still engaged. an example because these processes were least under- stood and I wanted in a way to avoid going into the 2. As a PhD student detailed current-current structure of the weak inter- My supervisor, Professor Hironari Miyazawa, actions. The idea was very simple: We already knew was one of the most prominent S-matrix theorists that the mass term which breaks the SU(3) symme- and we students were under his strong inuence. An try of Nagoya-Gell-Mann-Ne’eman is dominated by No. 4] From current algebra to the standard model 295 the octet representation of the group.9),25) I assumed a later stage, Professor Miyazawa pushed forward that the same thing would happen to the weak this idea by himself and became the inventor of Hamiltonian and then obtained a certain sum rule supersymmetry.30),31) I hope that our work played at which turned out to rather nicely t the experimen- least a precursor role to the idea of supersymmetry. tal data.26) I learned from Y. Hara who was staying I quote from a short note by Miyazawa entitled, atCaltechatthattimethatM.Gell-Mannhadgotten ‘‘Birth of Superalgebra’’ interested in my work and had obtained the same (http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~miyazaw1/papers/susy4.pdf): sum rule, at least for the s-wave amplitude without In nineteen sixties the top topic was the group theory 27) assuming the R-invariance.