Swansea University
A team of Swansea University Physicists has been awarded a £1.2million grant by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, to enable them to access state-of-the-art High Performance Computing facilities.
The award for the Swansea Lattice Field Theory Group is part of a wider £7.3million award to the eight-university UK Quantum Chromodynamics (UKQCD) Collaboration – comprising Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Oxford, Plymouth, Southampton, and Swansea Universities – led by Swansea's Professor Simon Hands as the Principal Investigator.
The UKQCD Collaboration uses these powerful computers to study Quantum Chromodynamics, which is the fundamental theory of the interactions between particles called quarks and gluons, in order to understand the structure and stability of protons and neutrons, and to understand why quarks are never seen in isolation.
The High Performance computers also facilitate the analysis and interpretation of particle collision experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland.
They will allow physicists to determine the behaviour and properties of matter at extremes of temperature and density, such as found in the first instants after the Big Bang, or at the core of a neutron star.
Professor Simon Hands of Swansea’s Lattice Field Theory Group and the UKQCD Collaboration’s Principal Investigator said: “UKQCD has been a world-leading collaboration of scientists studying such questions since 1990, and has consistently enjoyed access to some of the world's most powerful computers during this time. Swansea became a member in 1993 and now has one of the largest and best Lattice Field Theory groups in the UK.
For more information visit Swansea University’s Physics Department or the UKQCD
Swansea University, 3rd February 2010
