The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science has honored a University of Houston assistant professor of physics with an Early Career Research Program Award.
Volodymyr Vovchenko’s expertise is in high-energy nuclear theory, with an emphasis in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) – the theory describing the strong nuclear force. He has been with the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics for nearly three years.
The ‘Big Bang’ and Beyond
Vovchenko, a theoretical physicist, studies properties of matter under extreme conditions of temperature and density that last existed shortly after the Big Bang. There, the ordinary particles such as protons, neutrons, and other hadrons melt into smaller building blocks known as quarks and gluons, leading to a deconfined state of quark-gluon plasma (QGP). QGP is recreated today in the laboratory, through relativistic heavy-ion collisions at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The grant, which is sponsored by the Nuclear Theory Program Area within the Office of Science at the DOE, allows him to look further into how the transition between ordinary matter and QGP takes place. Researchers hope to identify the location of the QCD critical point – a phase diagram landmark denoting the end of a first-order phase transition – by analyzing the fluctuations in debris from heavy-ion collisions at ultra-relativistic energies. “What happens is we heat matter to roughly a trillion degrees for brief periods of time by accelerating heavy ions to almost the speed of light and hitting them head on,” said Vovchenko. “The presence of the critical point is expected to enhance fluctuations in the number of particles measured in the aftermath of the collision.”
He plans to grow and maintain his research group over the next five years with the $875,000 grant. “It allows us to pursue the pressing questions that the nuclear physics community has moving forward,” said Vovchenko.
The project will also bring together cutting-edge simulations of experiments performed at international facilities.
“Basic research like this often seeds future technologies and can lead to life-changing inventions in the years to come,” said Vovchenko. “This type of research also trains the next generation of physicists for careers across academia, national laboratories, and industry.”
Originally from Ukraine, Vovchenko studied at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv before moving to Germany for graduate school, obtaining a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at Goethe University Frankfurt. “I was fascinated by how the world works, and STEM fields like physics, mathematics, and computer science allowed me to explore and pursue my research interests.” He then moved to the U.S. and held positions as a Feodor-Lynen Research Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a research assistant professor at the University of Washington before joining UH in 2022 as an assistant professor.