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构成块，并确定它们之间的相互作用，从而形成我们观察到的物理世界。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，该模型涵盖了我们目前对物理基本相互作用的知识。它由两个量子场理论组成：电磁和弱相互作用的Weinberg-Salam理论和强相互作用的量子色动力学(QCD)。在过去的40年里，标准模型在解释加速器和宇宙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的物理。标准模型预计将是这一更一般理论的低能量限制，高能物理中的大量实验工作旨在寻找物理现象，这些现象需要标准模型以外的理论想法才能理解。该项目通过在Blue Waters上进行开创性的模拟来直接支持这一努力。为了了解标准模型可能会在哪里崩溃，新的物理学进入哪里，当然，人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)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QCD的许多最重要的预测并具有可控误差的唯一手段是通过将在Blue Waters上进行的那种大规模的数值模拟。这些模拟在努力更深入地理解物理基本定律方面发挥了重要作用。就更广泛的影响而言，该项目有一项长期的政策，即公开提供产生的大型数据集(规范配置和夸克传播子)和开发的代码。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在高能和核物理中非常重要的各种计算。此外，格子QCD一直是博士后和博士后学生卓有成效的培训基地。那些进入这个领域的人除了有坚实的物理学背景外，还必须获得广泛的计算机硬件和软件知识。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名年轻科学家在这一领域接受培训。一些人将从该项目的工作中受益，更多的人将从该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.