Steven Gottlieb, distinguished professor emeritus and provost professor emeritus of physics at Indiana University, uses computational models run on IU high-powered computing infrastructure to better define quantum behavior in elementary particles.
His work focuses on the interactions of quarks and gluons, a theory known as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Protons and neutrons are each made of three quarks. Mesons, such as the pion, are made of a quark and an antiquark. He studies mesons that contain a heavy quark called charm or bottom, unlike the pion that is made of the lightest quarks called up and down. QCD also changes the magnetic moment of the muon, a negatively charged particle that is similar to an electron but heavier. This magnetic moment was recently measured at Fermilab and is one of the most precisely measured quantities in physics. Gottlieb and his collaborators are looking for a gap between the theoretical value and the one measured in experiment. This could be evidence for new forces or particles in nature.
With decades of experience across the IU’s computational infrastructure history, Gottlieb has served on the university’s High Performance Computing (HPC) advisory council working to shape the future of computing at IU Bloomington. As a researcher, Gottlieb says he has benefitted from easy access to Research Technologies’ Big Red 200 and earlier systems. With such access, his research groups can explore new computations avoiding delays in applying to use national HPC resources.
Working on a project for the U.S. Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (USQCD), for example, Gottlieb found himself looking home toward IU. “The USQCD systems have millions of core hours, but the group supports the work of three national labs. Getting enough computing time then becomes the issue because sometimes it will be the case that the grant my teams apply for does not get enough allocation to finish a project,” he said. “That’s when I will use Big Red 200 to fill that gap.”
Gottlieb, whose computational research has been allocated time on the nation’s largest computer systems, like Oak Ridge Laboratory’s Frontier system or the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s Perlmutter, still relies on his home HPC network to get the jobs done. “It’s been the case that I have had twelve 36-node jobs running at once on Big Red 200,” said Gottlieb. “I don’t have to keep track of my allocation usage at IU.”
Find out more about Big Red 200.
