This grant supports the research activities of the Pacific Lattice Group, consisting of Professors James Hetrick, Kieran Holland, and Keisuke Juge at the University of the Pacific.
This project concerns computational field theory in particle physics. There are four strands in this work, three involving theoretical study of strongly-interacting particles and one managing a scientific data archive gateway. The thrust of the first strand is to understand from basic principles how a few fundamental building blocks, the quarks and gluons of QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics), generate the experimentally observed hadrons, such as the proton, neutron and other exotic particles, as well their properties and interactions. This work has significant relevance for nuclear physics. The second and third branches of this research program explore models of physics "Beyond the Standard Model", in particular investigating the possibility that the newly discovered Higgs particle might be a composite of "quark-like" particles, or even a manifestation of extra dimensional physics. Finally, the fourth part of this research program is the maintenance of a large, public, internationally accessible repository of lattice gauge theory data, allowing researchers around the world to access and build on the work of others, thereby significantly leveraging the investment in this work and that of other similar researchers.
The broader significance of this work is to advance our current understanding of the fundamental constituents, structure, and interactions of matter and the universe. The Standard Model of particle physics encapsulates the way that quarks and leptons interact, and explains all known accelerator data. This Model is much like the Periodic Table in chemistry at the turn of the 18th century: we have the table and its mathematical description of the interactions of its constituents, but we have no understanding of why the interactions take the form and structure that they do. In chemistry, the deeper understanding of the Periodic Table came with the next level of physics --- quantum theory, explaining why atoms have the properties and interactions that they do. We are at a similar crossroads now in our understanding of particle physics and the Standard Model, poised to break through to the next level of understanding of the structure of matter, and the results of this research project might potentially be one step in that direction. On the other hand, the data archive management component of this project uses the latest high-performance grid technologies to make the results of this work and other researchers around the world available to each other, greatly multiplying the return on the scientific investment made by the public.
