High Energy Physics on Blue Waters

蓝色水域的高能物理

• 批准号: 1615006
• 负责人: Paul Mackenzie
• 金额: $ 3.17万
• 依托单位: Fermi Research Alliance, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1615006&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Energy; Physics; Blue; Waters

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.

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，从而产生我们所观察到的物理世界。通过标准模型的开发，我们在实现这些目标方面取得了重大进展，其中包括我们目前对物理学基本相互作用的了解。它由两种量子场理论组成：电磁和弱相互作用的温伯格-萨拉姆理论和强相互作用的量子色动力学（QCD）理论。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成功。然而，高能物理学家认为，需要一个更通用的理论来解释最短距离或最高能量的物理现象。标准模型预计将成为这一更一般理论的低能量极限，高能物理中的大量实验工作都旨在寻找物理现象，这些物理现象需要超出标准模型的理论思想才能理解。该项目直接通过在 Blue Waters 上进行突破性的模拟来支持这一努力。为了了解标准模型可能在哪里崩溃以及新物理学的出现，我们当然必须确定其预测并将其与实验进行比较。这对于量子色动力学 (QCD) 来说尤其具有挑战性，量子色动力学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 Blue Waters 上进行的大规模数值模拟。这些模拟在加深对物理基本定律的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，即公开生产大数据集（规范配置和夸克传播器）并开发代码。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领域重要的各种计算。此外，晶格 QCD 一直是博士和博士后学生卓有成效的培训基地。进入该领域的人除了扎实的物理学背景外，还必须获得广泛的计算机硬件和软件知识。因此，在该领域接受过培训的科学家在学术界内外拥有广泛的就业机会。目前美国大约有七十五名年轻科学家正在接受这一领域的培训。有些人将从该项目的工作中受益，而更多的人将从该项目生成的代码和数据集中受益。