GSI-Kolloquium: "Using Antiprotons to Gain Insight on the Structure of Hadrons"

Hadrons are bound states of the strong interaction and they compose nearly all the visible matter in the universe. Nevertheless, it is not yet fully understood how intrinsic features of these states, such as the mass spectrum and the nucleon structure are determined by basic features of the strong interaction like color confinement and the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry in vacuum. This situation is emphasized by the many states recently discovered that can not be easily reconciled with simple quark models. One of the most promising methods to address these questions is to perform high precision measurements of the structure, spectroscopy and interaction of these states. The PANDA collaboration will exploit the statistical and energy precision available from high intensity phase space cooled beams of antiprotons to perform enable high precision spectroscopic studies of a wide range of final states. This talk will present an overview of the physics program of PANDA and provide a summary of the status in the construction of PANDA.