Table of contents

Neutron stars are an excellent laboratory for nuclear physics. They probe the nucleon-nucleon interaction, the structure of nuclei, and the nature of dense QCD in ways which complement current experimental efforts. This article very briefly summarizes some of the current frontiers in neutron stars and dense matter with an emphasis on how our understanding might be improved in the near future.

In the second phase of the LHC physics program, the accelerator will provide an additional integrated luminosity of about 2500/fb over 10 years of operation to the general purpose detectors ATLAS and CMS. This will substantially enlarge the mass reach in the search for new particles and will also greatly extend the potential to study the properties of the Higgs boson discovered at the LHC in 2012. In order to meet the experimental challenges of unprecedented pp luminosity, the experiments will need to address the aging of the present detectors and to improve the ability to isolate and precisely measure the products of the most interesting collisions. The lectures gave an overview of the physics motivation and described the conceptual designs and the expected performance of the upgrades of the four major experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, along with the plans to develop the appropriate experimental techniques and a brief overview of the accelerator upgrade. Only some key points of the upgrade program of the four major experiments are discussed in this report; more information can be found in the references given at the end.

These lectures explain that comparisons between experiment and theory can expose the impact of running couplings and masses on hadron observables and thereby aid materially in charting the momentum dependence of the interaction that underlies strong-interaction dynamics. The series begins with a primer on continuum QCD, which introduces some of the basic ideas necessary in order to understand the use of Schwinger functions as a nonperturbative tool in hadron physics. It continues with a discussion of confinement and dynamical symmetry breaking (DCSB) in the Standard Model, and the impact of these phenomena on our understanding of condensates, the parton structure of hadrons, and the pion electromagnetic form factor. The final lecture treats the problem of grand unification; namely, the contemporary use of Schwinger functions as a symmetry-preserving tool for the unified explanation and prediction of the properties of both mesons and baryons. It reveals that DCSB drives the formation of diquark clusters in baryons and sketches a picture of baryons as bound-states with Borromean character. Planned experiments are capable of validating the perspectives outlined in these lectures.

These lecture notes contain an elementary introduction to lattice QCD at nonzero chemical potential. Topics discussed include chemical potential in the continuum and on the lattice; the sign, overlap and Silver Blaze problems; the phase boundary at small chemical potential; imaginary chemical potential; and complex Langevin dynamics. An incomplete overview of other approaches is presented as well. These lectures are meant for postgraduate students and postdocs with an interest in extreme QCD. A basic knowledge of lattice QCD is assumed but not essential. Some exercises are included at the end.