Hidden Quantum World Inside the Proton

During a deeply inelastic collision with a proton, a relativistic electron (highlighted in blue) can emit a high-energy photon (purple here) that penetrates interior of the proton, where it ‘sees’ only a fraction of the entangled quarks, gluons, and virtual particles. The excited proton later decays in cascades of secondary particles. Credit: IFJ PAN, jch

Protons are far from simple particles — they are swirling cauldrons of quarks, gluons, and quantum entanglement.  Scientists have used this entanglement to develop a universal model explaining how particles emerge from high-energy collisions. 

Their predictions align with past experimental data, and future colliders will put their theory to the ultimate test, possibly reshaping our understanding of nuclear physics.

Peering Inside the Proton
The inside of a proton is one of the most dynamic yet elusive realms in physics. Within this tiny particle, quarks and gluons interact in a constantly shifting sea of virtual particles. 

Now, using quantum information theory and the concept of quantum entanglement, scientists have developed a new framework to describe these interactions with unprecedented clarity.

For the first time, this approach successfully explains data from all available experiments involving the scattering of secondary particles in deep inelastic collisions between electrons and protons.      READ MORE...