Lattice Field Theory

Institut für Physik
Mathematisch-Naturwissen­schaft­liche Fakultät
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Welcome to the website of the Lattice Field Theory group at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Learn more about us, our research, our seminars and events. If you are a student, you can check out the courses offered by members of the group.

Lattice Field Theory in a nutshell

Lattice techniques are used to study various strongly-coupled quantum field theories, starting from a Euclidean path-integral formulation. The continuous Euclidean spacetime is replaced with a lattice, which provides an ultraviolet regulator. The discretized path-integral can be calculated by means of numerical simulation.

The prime application of lattice field theory is Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), which governs the physics of hadrons. The fundamental fields of QCD are quarks and gluons, but these do not exist as particles in isolation: since the strength of the QCD interaction increases with the distance, quarks and gluons are confined into complicated composite particles called hadrons such as protons, neutrons, pions, kaons, etc. The structure and properties of hadrons are not accessible via perturbation theory, but they can be numerically calculated in the framework of lattice simulations.

These computer simulations are extremely expensive and require the most powerful supercomputers available on the planet. For instance, the results presented by Alessandro Cotellucci and Jens Lücke at The 39th International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory in 2022 were produced using about 60M corehours in a little longer than two years. In order to produce the same results with an 8-core computer, one would need about 850 years. Play with openQ*D, the simulation code used for these simulations! It can be found here.

(Non-)Standard Model, the fun way

The physics of the Standard Model and beyond, explained by the students of the Research Training Group “Rethinking Quantum Field Theory” and their guests. Follow the NonStandardModels channels on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Watch the trailer here: