This project will perform a collection of calculations using lattice QCD techniques to shed light on some of the most pressing open questions in nuclear physics. To address a puzzling discrepancy between measurements of normal hydrogen (an electron bound to a proton) and muonic hydrogen (a muon bound to a proton), researchers will calculate the charge radius of the proton with an uncertainty roughly 80% smaller than the measured discrepancy.

To facilitate experimental searches for particles that may explain the inexplicably small masses of neutrinos or constitute dark matter, they will calculate nucleon properties that determine the strength of the interaction between nucleons in experimental detectors and these exotic particles.

To explore possible reasons for the fact that there is significantly more matter than antimatter in our universe, the researchers will calculate how various hypothetical explanations would affect the distribution of electric charge (specifically, the electric dipole moment or EDM) in protons and neutrons using a highly economical computing scheme that the team has developed.

These, and other related calculations, will be performed using software that was tested and optimized on the Blue Gene/Q and used in other ALCC projects as well as unique tools developed through DOE’s INCITE program and computer time at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Edinburgh.