Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

LQCD Model Reconstruction

Student: Balin Armstrong

School: College of William & Mary

Mentored By: Raúl Briceño

Gluons and quarks are particles that constitute larger independently found particles such as nucleons. Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the study of the strong force which dictates interactions between these particles. As in general, QCD fails to provide perturbative solutions to describe the behavior, a method called Lattice QCD (LQCD) is used to discretize spacetime into a lattice. This causes the behavior of the particles to obey statistical conditions in order for Monte Carlo techniques to be used to evaluate path integrals. Due to the probabilistic nature of LQCD, when reconstructing the scattering amplitude, multiple amplitudes can be found when fitting the data and this produces large systematic uncertainties for particles arising from these interactions. This problem may be solved by defining a consistent statistical tool to average particle behaviors found in the amplitude analysis. This is done by generating fake data, then applying information criteria to robustly estimate the uncertainties on the resonances. In this project, the model was able to be reconstructed by fitting the generated data. From here we will test if it is possible to use the information criteria to model complicated interactions between particles. If so, the criteria will allow for greater understanding of interactions when using LQCD. As a result, better prediction of intermediary particles formed by the interactions of gluons, quarks, and antiquarks is achieved. If the information criteria are viable, the statistical tool formed for amplitude analysis would not be restricted to just LQCD analyses, but could be used by experimental physicists as well for analyzing data.

[Watch the presentation on YouTube]