Computation and Data-Driven Discovery (C3D): Components
Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics
Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (Lattice QCD) simulates the interaction between quarks and gluons using Monte Carlo methods based on the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics. Lattice QCD has been successfully applied to study the QCD phase transition, CP violation, hadron structure and various other important topics in theoretical nuclear and high energy physics.
Lattice QCD calculations have been performed on the world’s fastest supercomputers, from the in-house QCDSP and QCDOC supercomputers at BNL, to Mira – the BlueGene/Q supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory. With the growing computing power, the amount of data Lattice QCD generates is also exploding.
Some of these data can be recycled for new calculations when new ideas come along and can be shared with researchers without access to a large amount of computing power to speed up their calculations. However, data storage and retrieval have been difficult, since the amount of reusable data generated is quickly approaching the petabyte scale.
The goal for Lattice QCD in the Center for Data-Driven Discovery is to archive these intermediate data, including the gluon field configurations, the quark propagators and the Dirac eigenvectors, and have an efficient retrieval mechanism so that these costly data can be easily shared with the community.
