Lattice QCD (LQCD123)
The research activity of the LQCD123 group in Tor Vergata concerns the study of the strong interactions in the non-perturbative regime and their effects in certain processes of utmost relevance for the phenomenology of the Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics. Monte Carlo simulations of the basic theory (QCD, recently also including QED corrections at the leading order of the perturbation theory) cleverly regulated on spacetime lattices of sufficiently large volume allow for a rigorous and systematically improvable study of the non-perturbative observables of interest, e.g. masses and widths of the lightest hadrons as well as matrix elements of the effective electroweak Hamiltonian (in the SM and beyond) between hadron states. Besides providing a first-principle test of QCD as the correct theory of strong interactions, these computations enable extraction of the free parameters of the SM and its possible extensions from the experimental data with a controlled accuracy at the level of few-percents or better, which is the precision required to detect possible signals of New Physics.
These simulations are fundamental for the interpretation of processes such as decays, meson-antimeson oscillations, and vacuum polarization, and they play a crucial role in the search for new physics at the precision frontier. A recent example is the first-principles calculation of the hadronic contributions to the muon g-2, to which the lattice QCD community has made a significant contribution.
Without reliable first-principles theoretical predictions for hadronic observables, many experimental results in particle physics — including those aimed at the direct search for new physics — would be essentially uninterpretable. The work of the research group aims to bridge this gap by providing precise and systematically improvable predictions.
Staff members involved:
N. Tantalo
G.M. de Divitiis
R. Frezzotti
G.C. Rossi
A. Vladikas
P. Dimopoulos