Investigations in Lattice Field Theory

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The research effort will have three main themes connected with Lattice Gauge Theory (LGT). The phenomenology of excited and exotic hadrons is work directly relevant to experimental efforts at medium/high energy at Fermilab, Jefferson Lab, Cornell, and Stanford. For example, the Glue-X experiment proposed at Jefferson Lab is aimed at looking for "exotic" hadrons in the near future. The differences between excited and exotic particles requires theoretical understanding which only LGT can provide. In 2007, CERN's Large Hadron Collider will come online and presumably give us information about the most elusive aspect of the Standard Model (SM), the Higgs sector. Unraveling the implications of these experiments for physics beyond the SM requires a non-perturbative understanding of the theory. The PIs intend to explore this by developing a detailed understanding of a Higgs-Top-Gluon model using LGT. This model captures the essential couplings of the SM as the regularization cutoff is pushed to high energy and will help us see where the SM breaks down, heralding new physics. The third major inquiry by our group is into the nature of quark confinement. There is much LGT evidence showing confinement to be related to topological excitations of the gauge field, such as instantons, vortices, and monopoles. This proposal represents the inauguration of a new lattice gauge theory (LGT) group at the University of the Pacific. This will bring research possibilities to undergraduates in an accessible field that stresses computational physics.