A team of researchers has leveraged a supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory to reveal the internal structure of a pion in unprecedented detail. The findings are published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

Pions are subatomic particles that help bind matter at some of the smallest scales in nature. They are closely connected to the strong nuclear force, the fundamental force that holds protons and neutrons together inside atomic nuclei. Understanding how pions work can help scientists explain how matter forms at its most fundamental level.

“Pions mediate the strong force that binds nucleons—that is, the protons and neutrons that account for an atom’s mass,” said Yong Zhao, an Argonne physicist and principal investigator on the project.