Berkeley Lab was awarded $1.35 million over two years by the DOE’s Office of High Energy Physics, through the Quantum Outposts on the Energy and Intensity Frontiers program, for a research project led by Christian Bauer, a Senior Scientist in the Physics Division, entitled “Testing Hadronization Models with Near-Term Quantum Hardware”. The project is a joint effort with the University of Washington.
Hadronization describes how quarks and gluons, which are never observed in isolation, turn into observable hadrons such as protons and neutrons. It is one of the least understood aspects of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
Today, hadronization can only be described by simplistic classical models. Testing their core assumptions against first-principles quantum simulations will make it possible to improve them, reducing a major source of systematic uncertainty in experimental particle physics.
