Heavy quark phenomenology from Lattice QCD

The theory describing the dynamics of the fundamental particles called quarks is Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The detailed experimental study of quarks may reveal evidence for unknown physics, which ultimately could explain the particles making up "dark matter". To extract information about the quarks from the experiments, carried out at the LHC and other accelerators around the world, requires that QCD is solved with high precision. Another motivation for solving QCD is to predict the properties of novel bound states of quarks, such as hybrid mesons, where the dynamics of the gluons play a critical role. A key method to solve QCD is lattice QCD, where a space-time lattice is introduced and the resulting equations are solved on large supercomputers using Monte Carlo methods.
The project will involve lattice QCD calculations, with heavy quarks, of some weak matrix elements required at experiments such as LHCb and Belle II. The student will learn lattice QCD measurement techniques, including code development, and run their codes on state of the art supercomputers, such as the Cambridge service for data driven discovery.