Lattice QCD on Blue Waters

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This proposal is for a provisional allocation of time on the Blue Waters computer system, due to become operational in 2011, and for travel funds to support technical coordination with the Blue Waters project team.The project will use Blue Waters to conduct numerical experiments in quantum chromodynamics. The simulations will be used to determine fundamental parameters of the Standard Model of nuclear physics and will help to determine its range of validity. They will also be used to calculate the masses, internal structure and interactions of strongly interacting particles, including the masses of the up and down quarks and the values of the weak transition couplings between quarks. These are parameters in the Lagrangian that defines the Standard Model and refinement of these parameters will allow the prediction of rare decays under the Standard Model. The nature of the predictions of such decays can be quantitatively compared with the signatures of such decays in high-energy physics experiments. Physicists plan to use such comparisons to determine the range of validity of the Standard Model. The combination of lattice-gauge calculations such as these and experiments in facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider offer a way of probing for new physics in the behavior of sub-atomic particles. The proposed simulations will reduce the uncertainty in the masses of the light and heavy quarks to 1% and contribute to a number of other questions in nuclear physics.The project will provide a library of gauge configurations that will be made available as a resource that will support research by many nuclear physicists, domestically and internationally. It is anticipated that these configurations will be used as input data for many doctoral theses and post-doctoral research projects.