High Energy Physics on Blue Waters

高能物理学家的长期目标是确定物质的基本组成部分，并确定它们之间的相互作用，这些相互作用产生了我们所观察到的物理世界。通过标准模型的发展，在实现这些目标方面取得了重大进展，标准模型涵盖了我们目前对物理学基本相互作用的认识。它由两个量子场论组成：电磁和弱相互作用的温伯格-萨拉姆理论，以及强相互作用的量子色动力学（QCD）。标准模型在解释过去四十年来加速器和宇宙射线实验中产生的大量数据方面取得了巨大的成功。然而，高能物理学家认为，需要一个更普遍的理论来解释最短距离或最高能量下的物理学。标准模型被认为是这一更普遍理论的低能极限，高能物理学中大量的实验努力都是为了寻找那些需要标准模型之外的理论思想来理解的物理现象。这个项目通过对蓝色沃茨进行突破性的模拟来直接支持这一努力。为了理解标准模型可能在哪里崩溃，新的物理学可能在哪里出现，当然，我们必须确定它的预测，并将它们与实验进行比较。这对量子色动力学（QCD）来说尤其具有挑战性，QCD是描述亚原子物理强相互作用的标准模型的组成部分。目前，从第一性原理中提取许多最重要的QCD预测并控制误差的唯一方法是通过将在蓝色沃茨上进行的大规模数值模拟。这些模拟在努力获得对物理学基本定律的更深入理解方面发挥着重要作用。就更广泛的影响而言，该项目有一项长期政策，即公开提供所产生的大型数据集（规范配置和夸克传播子）和所开发的代码。根据过去的经验，该项目预计，为该项目创建的数据集和代码将被其他人用于高能和核物理学中重要的各种计算。此外，格点QCD已成为博士和博士后学生的一个富有成效的培训基地。那些进入这个领域的人必须获得广泛的计算机硬件和软件知识，除了坚实的物理背景。因此，在这一领域受过培训的科学家在学术界内外都有广泛的就业机会。目前，美国大约有75名青年科学家在这一领域接受培训。有些人将从项目中受益，更多的人将从项目产生的代码和数据集中受益。

The long term goals of high energy physicists are to identify the basic building blocksof matter and to determine the interactions among them that give rise to the physical world we observe.Major progress has been made towards these goals through the development of the standard model, whichencompasses our current knowledge of the fundamental interactions of physics. It consists of two quantumfield theories: the Weinberg-Salam theory of electromagnetic and weak interactions, and quantum chromodynamics(QCD), the theory of the strong interactions. The standard model has been enormously successfulin explaining a wealth of data produced in accelerator and cosmic ray experiments over the past forty years.However, high energy physicists believe that a more general theory will be needed to explain physics at theshortest distances or highest energies. The standard model is expected to be the low energy limit of thismore general theory, and a great deal of the experimental effort in high energy physics is directed towardsthe search for physical phenomena that will require theoretical ideas beyond the standard model for theirunderstanding.This project directly supports this effort by carrying out ground-breaking simulations on Blue Waters. In order to understand where the standard model might break down and new physics enter, one must, ofcourse, determine its predictions and compare them with experiment. This is particularly challenging forquantum chromodynamics (QCD), the component of the standard model that describes the strong interactionsof sub-atomic physics. At present, the only means of extracting many of the most important predictionsof QCD from first principles and with controlled errors is through large scale numerical simulationsof the type that will be carried out on Blue Waters. These simulations play an important role in efforts toobtain a deeper understanding of the fundamental laws of physics. In terms of broader impacts, the project has a long standing policy to make the largedata sets (gauge configurations and quark propagators) produced and codes developed publiclyavailable. Based on past experience, the project anticipates that the data sets and codes created for the projectwill be used by others in a wide variety of calculations important in high energy and nuclearphysics.Furthermore, lattice QCD has been a fruitful training ground for doctoral and postdoctoral students. Those entering thefield must obtain a broad knowledge of computer hardware and software, in addition to a solid background inphysics. As a result, scientists trained in this field have a wide range of employment opportunities inside andoutside of academia. There are approximately seventy-fiveyoung scientists in training in this field in the United States at the present time. Some will benefit fromworking on the project, and many more from the code and data sets produced by it.