Cluster of Excellence Color Meets Flavor Launched

In the lecture hall, he immediately dispelled the misconception that Color Meets Flavor might literally concern combinations of colors and tastes. The terms have developed historically in physics and describe properties of elementary particles that lead to strong or weak interactions inside an atomic nucleus. Students already learn in middle school that these are two of the four known fundamental forces. For a long time, it was believed that there were only four elementary particles. But phenomena in cosmic radiation or experiments in particle accelerators have shown that there are eight more. The Higgs boson also holds a special position: long predicted through theoretical calculations, it was not actually measured until 2012.

It is now clear, however, that current knowledge remains incomplete and that the so‑called Standard Model of physics must be expanded. In astrophysics, for example, measurements yield values that cannot be explained by visible matter and point to “dark matter,” which could consist of an unknown elementary particle such as the axion. In collisions in accelerators, exotic states are observed that appear to consist not of the usual three, but of four or five elementary particles. And it is still not understood why the Big Bang did not produce equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but apparently resulted in a surplus of matter.

These clues are what the new Cluster of Excellence Color Meets Flavor intends to pursue. In the near future, however, no experiment larger than the Large Hadron Collider at CERN – known as the “world machine,” located 100 meters underground and 27 km long – will be available. To push further into the unknown, theory and experiment must therefore be closely intertwined. This requires highly precise measurements at various machines, which are then analyzed and combined using calculations performed on high‑performance supercomputers. The Cluster of Excellence benefits from the complementary expertise of its sites, access to various large‑scale experiments, and Europe’s fastest supercomputer, JUPITER in Jülich.

The Cluster of Excellence has set itself the goal of involving the public in the fundamental questions of physics and its discoveries. Programs such as “Rent a Prof” for schools, entertaining physics shows in unusual locations, or accounts on social‑media platforms are part of the initiative. At Dortmund’s 2024 Science Night, even an ice‑cream stand was used to playfully illustrate the structure of matter: a scoop of ice cream symbolized a quark with different “flavors,” so that a “proton,” for example, consisted of two scoops of vanilla (“up quark”) and one scoop of raspberry (“down quark”). Professor Alexander Lenz’s tip for all fans of “Zwischen Brötchen und Borussia”: at the Science Night 2026 in September, one should ask about the exotic states and order a “pentaquark” for fivefold enjoyment.

About the Color Meets Flavor Team

The founding members of Cluster of Excellence 3107 include 25 researchers from the Universities of Bonn, Dortmund, and Siegen, as well as Forschungszentrum Jülich. The spokesperson is Professor Jochen Dingfelder from Bonn. The founding members from TU Dortmund University are: Professor Johannes Albrecht (site spokesperson), Dr. Chris Malena Delitzsch, Professor Gudrun Hiller, Professor Kevin Kröninger, and Professor Julia Vogel. Funding for the first phase runs from 2026 to 2032.

About the „Color Meets Flavor“ team

Watch the presentation of Prof. Alexander Lenz

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