Medium Modification of Hadrons

Abstract

Abstract. The theory of the strong interaction, Quantum Chromodynamics, has been remarkably successful in describing high-energy and short-distance-scale experiments involving quarks and gluons. However, applying QCD to low energy and large-distance-scale experiments has been a major challenge. Chiral symmetry is one of the most fundamental symmetries in QCD and provides guiding principles to deal with strong interaction phenomena in the non-perturbative domain. Various QCD-inspired models predict a modification of the properties of hadrons in nuclear matter from their free-space values. A review of experiments searching for the in-medium modifications of light mesons and baryons will be given trying to assess if they confirm or refute these theoretical predictions.