New Applicant scheme in Theoretical Particle Physics.

Lead Research Organisation: Plymouth University
Department Name: Sch of Computing, Electronics & Maths

Abstract

Lattice QCD calculations are now producing physical results with
errors at below the few percent level for some quantities. There
are some quantities that require so called disconnected pieces to be calculated, where
the dynamics between quarks are solely due to gluons. It is currently
a hot topic in lattice QCD to accurately compute physical quantities
that involve disconnected diagrams, unfortunately these are
computationally expensive. I propose to develop some novel algorithms
to compute these disconnected diagrams, which will be computationally cheaper,
and thus help reduce the error on physical quantities.

Planned Impact

My work on the algorithms for disconnected diagrams will have applications to many lattice QCD calculations. The algorithms for
disconnected diagrams are actually computing the trace of an inverse sparse matrix and the algorithms have been used in
the numerical analysis community.
 
Description A key aim of particle physics is to find new theories that explain parts of the standard model of particle physics. A first step is find experimental evidence for the disagreement of the theoretical predictions of the standard model with experiment. There has been a long standing tension between the calculation of the anamalous magnetic moment of the muon and experiment. My main achievement was to calculate the contribution from the up and down quark masses being different.
Exploitation Route This calculation is part of a program of research to compute the leading order hadronic corrections to the anamalous magnetic moment of the muon with an accuracy at the 0.2 % level. There is a new experiment at FNAL which will measure the anamalous magnetic moment of the muon with lower errors. The improved theory numbers will be important for that experiment and to further constrain novel new theories of particle physics.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
 
Description Festival of Physics in plymouth 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The Festival of Physics was held at the University of Plymouth on
Saturday 23rd November. The event for the general public was organized
by the South West branch of the Institute of Physics. There were talks
on topics such as data science, planetary science and quantum
computers. The event included demonstrations using super-conductors, a
card game about particle physics (run by Dr A. Rago), and waves in a portable wave tank.
Ninety members of the public attended the festival and the feedback
was uniformly positive.

I was the main organizer. The event was part of the program of events of the South West branch of the IOP
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://events.iop.org/festival-physics
 
Description Mysterious Space X-Rays from "Cygnus X-3" 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact This is a set of exercises on the analysis of X-ray data from the Cygnus X-3. The aim of the exercise is to see how scientific analysis of data is done and to introduce the students to python using jupyter notebooks.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://sites.google.com/view/cygnus-x-3/home
 
Description Using Supercomputers to Search for the Breakdown of the Standard Model of Particle Physics 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Using Supercomputers to Search for the Breakdown of the Standard Model of Particle Physics

Dr Craig McNeile, Lecturer in Theoretical Physics, University of Plymouth.

Craig will give a short overview to some of the open questions in particle
physics. He will then discuses the use of High Performance Computing
(HPC) to solve the equations of QCD (one of the theories behind
nuclear physics), and how these calculations are required in searches
for novel fundamental physics theories. He will describe some of the HPC infrastructure, such as the HPC cluster at the University of Plymouth
and the national systems run by the Distributed Research utilizing
Advanced Computing (Dirac) consortium. He will talk about the size
of the data sets generated, and briefly touch on the role of visualisations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.meetup.com/datasciencecornwall/events/265417128/