David Clarke, Physicist

I’m David, a researcher using lattice field theory, to study particle physics. Lattice field theory is a framework that is especially well suited for computer simulation.

One of my research topics is strongly interacting matter at finite temperature and density. When this matter becomes sufficiently hot and dense, it exists in a state known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Physicists are interested in QGP, in part because it dominated the early universe, a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. QGP can be probed in heavy ion experiments, which are carried out at CERN and Brookhaven.

Right now I’m working as a postdoc at University of Utah. I’m going to help with lattice input to a calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, \(a_\mu\). Part of \(a_\mu\) can be calculated using either lattice methods or so-called dispersive methods, the latter of which have extremely tight error bars commensurate with experimental error. There is some discrepancy between the \(a_\mu\) determined using dispersive input and \(a_\mu\) measured in experiment. If this discrepancy were confirmed, it would be exciting to the physics community, since it would indicate a specific region where our current theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, breaks down. Interestingly however, a recent calculation of \(a_\mu\) using lattice input falls between experiment and the dispersive approach, slightly favoring experiment. We're trying to help sort this out.