High energy physics has a long and close association with high performance scientific computation. The data samples collected with massive particle detectors of experimental HEP require significant data handling and processing loads. The push for grid-based computing was significantly driven by the phenomenal computing needs expected for the LHC experiments that will soon be coming online at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Even categories of experiments that traditionally do not demand large computation resources, such as neutrino experiments, are now producing high statistics datasets that are requiring significant computational resources for analysis and interpretation of the results of recent experiments.
On the theoretical side, the physics of the strong interaction (QCD) had been analytically intractable for a wide range of problems of current interest. Lattice QCD is a tool that allows us to investigate the dynamics of QCD, understand how certain low energy phenomena arise, and compute the consequences of the Standard Model. It is expected to play an important role in supporting the experimental effort and in discovering new physics. The computational demands for the high precision, phenomenologically interesting lattice QCD calculations are such that high performance massively parallel supercomputers are required. However, small scale resources are also critical for developing new ideas and training graduate and undergraduate students. In addition, small scale resources with enough local storage can play an important role in the analysis of the gauge field configurations and quark propagators generated on the big machines. This part of the analysis is usually done by small groups located at universities.
This proposal addresses the computational needs of the W&M neutrino group and the larger neutrino community for simulations of neutrino interactions in the MINOS neutrino detectors currently operation at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois and the Soudan Underground Lab in northern Minnesota. Concurrently, this proposal will provide a facility for performing small pilot projects in lattice QCD and for supporting the data analysis requirements of the large computations performed on the major Lattice QCD machines. In effect, this proposal enables the PIs and W&M students to play a significant role in the larger Lattice QCD community and allow them access to the results of the major computations in this area.
