XVIIth Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum (QCHS 2026)

Scientific Programme

Vacuum Structure and Confinement

A

• Mechanisms of quark confinement (vortices, monopoles, calorons…);
• Structure of the vacuum in non-Abelian gauge theories;
• Chiral symmetry breaking and the Dirac spectrum in the low-momentum region;
• Studies of ghost and gluon propagators;
• Confining strings and flux tubes, their effective actions;
• Renormalons and power corrections;
• Interface between perturbative and non-perturbative physics.

Conveners:
Dmitry Antonov (Heidelberg University, Germany)
Manfried Faber (TU Wien, Austria)
Jeff Greensite (San Francisco State University, USA)

Local Convener:
Maciej A. Nowak (Jagiellonian University, Poland) TBC

Light Quarks

B

• Chiral and soft collinear effective theories;
• Sum rules;
• Lattice calculations;
• Schwinger-Dyson equations;
• Masses of light quarks;
• Light-quark loops;
• Phenomenology of light-hadron form factors, spectra and decays;
• Structure functions and generalised parton distributions;
• Exotics and glueballs;
• Experiments.

Conveners:
Sean Dobbs (Florida State University, USA)
Hagop Sazdjian (Paris-Saclay University, France)
Ayse Kizilersu (University of Adelaide, USA)
Fernando Romero-Lopez (University of Bern, Switzerland)

Local Convener:
Krzysztof Michał Cichy (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland)

Heavy Quarks

C

• Heavy-light mesons, heavy quarkonia, heavy baryons, heavy exotics and related topics: phenomenology of spectra, decays, and production;
• Effective theories for heavy quarks (HQET, NRQCD, pNRQCD, vNRQCD, SCET);
• Sum rules for heavy hadrons;
• Lattice calculations of heavy hadrons;
• Heavy-quark mass determinations;
• Experiments.

Conveners:
Atsushi Hosaka (University of Osaka, Japan) TBC
Roberto Mussa (INFN Torino, Italy)
Joan Soto (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Antonio Vairo (TU Munich, Germany)
Francesco Knechtli (University of Wuppertal, Germany)

Local Convener:
Joanna Brodzicka (Institute of Nuclear Physics PAS, Poland) TBC

Deconfinement

D

• QCD at finite temperature;
• Quark-gluon plasma detection and characteristics;
• Jet quenching;
• Transport coefficients;
• Lattice QCD and phases of quark matter;
• QCD vacuum and strong fields;
• Heavy-ion experiments;
• Experiments.

Conveners:
Yiota Foka (GSI, Germany)
Jacopo Ghiglieri (SUBATECH, Nantes, France)
Peter Petreczky (BNL, USA)
Felix Ringer (JLab, USA)
Jan Pawlowski (Heidelberg University, Germany)

Local Convener:
Małgorzata Janik (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)

QCD and New Physics

E

Physics beyond the Standard Model from hadronic physics, including precision experimental data and precision calculations.

Conveners:
Michael L. Wagman (Fermilab, USA) TBC
Susan Gardner (University of Kentucky, USA)
Marina Krstic Marinkovic (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
Giulia Ricciardi (University of Naples, Italy)
Wolfgang Korsch (University of Kentucky, USA)

Local Convener:
Mikolaj Misiak (University of Warsaw, Poland)

Nuclear and Astro-particle Physics

F

• Nuclear matter;
• Nuclear forces;
• Quark matter;
• Neutron and compact stars.

Conveners:
Mark Alford (Washington University in St. Louis, USA)
Raffaele del Grande (Prague, Czech Republic)
Andreas Schmitt (University of Southampton, UK)
Evgeny Epelbaum (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany)
Anthony W. Thomas (University of Adelaide, USA)

Local Convener:
David Blaschke (University of Wroclaw)

Strongly-Coupled Theories and Dark Matter

G

• Hints on the confinement/deconfinement mechanisms from supersymmetric and string theories;
• Strongly-coupled theories beyond the Standard Model;
• Applications of nonperturbative methods of QCD to other fields;
• Strongly-coupled scenarios of BSM and Dark Matter.

Conveners:
Domènec Espriu (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Zoltan Fodor (University of Wuppertal, Germany)
Roman Pasechnik (Lund University, Sweden)
Werner Porod (University of Würzburg, Germany) TBC
Michael Spannowsky (Durham University, UK)

Local Convener:
Andrzej Hryczuk (National Centre For Nuclear Research, Poland)

Statistical Methods for Physics Analysis

H

• Machine learning techniques;
• Data fitting and extraction of signals;
• New developments in unfolding methods;
• Averaging and combination of results.

Conveners:
Tommaso Dorigo (University of Padova, Italy)
Sergei V. Gleyzer (University of Alabama, USA)
Enrico Rinaldi (Quantinuum)
Phiala Shanahan (MIT, USA)

Local Convener:
Jakub Zakrzewski (Jagiellonian University, Poland)

Focus subsession on Topology and confinement at the interface of particle physics and condensed matter

AS

Conveners:
Ivan Horvath (University of Kentucky, USA) TBC
Jad C. Halimeh (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) TBC
Maria Cristina Diamantini (University of Perugia, Italy)

Local Convener:
Jozef Spalek (Jagiellonian University) TBC