Professor
Relativistic heavy-ion collisions, quark-gluon plasma, nucleon-nucleon interaction, quark effects in nuclei, intermediate energy nuclear scattering, random matrices, nuclear and nucleon structure, nuclear shell model, computational physics.
- Telephone: (416)978-8675
- e-mail: swong@physicsdomain
Brief CV
B.A. ICU, Japan (1959); M.Sc., Purdue (1961); Ph.D., Rochester (1965). Research Associate, Rochester (1965-67), Edmonton (1967-68).
Research Interests
Nuclei provide an ideal ground for the study of strong interactions. When two heavy ions collide with each at kinetic energies many times of their rest masses, small regions of very high energy density is formed. In such regions, the confinement of quarks and gluons inside nucleons may no longer be relevant and a plasma of quarks and gluons is formed. The study of such a new form of matter can inform us of the nature of strong interaction that is not possible by any other means. Many interesting questions can be asked. For example, what is the nature of the phase transition from nucleons to quark-gluon plasma? What are the properties that can be observed?
The source of nuclear force comes from the strong interaction between quarks. The establishment of a quantitative link between the two types of force, however, remains a challenge to subatomic physics. The problem is of interest to computational physics as well. Because the interaction is strong, perturbative techniques often fail to provide the necessary accuracy and large scale numerical computation becomes the only viable alternative. The equations coming out of such studies are often complicated, a reflection of the nonlinear nature of the physics involved. By confronting these equations with modern computational techniques, numerical as well as algebraic, interesting physical results are obtained.
Recent Publications
``Nuclear Statistical Spectroscopy'', S.S.M. Wong, Oxford Studies in Nuclear Physics, (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1986) ISBN 0-19-504004-X.
``Introductory Nuclear Physics'', S.S.M. Wong, (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990) ISBN 0-13-491168-7.
``Computational Methods in Physics and Engineering'', S.S.M. Wong, (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1992), ISBN 0-13-15593-2.
``Solitons and Nucleons'', S.S.M. Wong, From Spectroscopy to Chaos, World Scientific (Singapore, 1995).
``Relativistic Hydrodynamics and Essentially Non-oscillatory Shock Capturing Schemes'', A. Dolezal and S.S.M. Wong, J. Comp. Phys., (in press).
History