David Schaich
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Physics Department and Center for Computational Science Boston University 590 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215 Curriculum Vitae (last modified 13 November 2009) |
Office: PRB 558 (3 Cummington St.) Phone: 617/353-6065 Fax: 617/358-4419 |
Biography
I'm a Ph.D. student in theoretical particle physics at Boston University. Originally from the Detroit area, I graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 2006 with majors in physics, history, and mathematics. At BU I am a member of the high energy theory group, focusing on lattice gauge theory and dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking. I am also a member of the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration.
I was supported for one year by a BU Dean's Fellowship, and for another two by an NSF IGERT fellowship through the Center for Computational Science.
Research
The bullet-point list of my research interests:
- Lattice gauge theory and lattice QCD.
- Dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking and novel strong dynamics.
- Quantum field theory and physics beyond the standard model.
- High performance computing and computational physics.
In more complete sentences, my research focuses on strongly interacting gauge theories in particle physics. Strong interactions invalidate perturbation theory, making these theories very challenging to study and often poorly understood. The best-known strong theory is quantum chromodynamics (QCD), part of the standard model of particle physics. QCD describes the "color" interactions of quarks, gluons, and composite particles such as protons, neutrons, pions and many more.
While QCD is the strongly-coupled theory we know best, many others exist and some may be of considerable phenomenological interest. In particular, strong dynamics has long been one of the most attractive mechanisms for electroweak symmetry breaking, the process by which elementary particles acquire mass and one of the most important unsolved problems of the standard model. Dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking (dubbed "technicolor" since it was initially modelled on QCD) is very likely to be either discovered or ruled out at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the near future.
High-performance computing is one of the most powerful tools we possess for studying strong dynamics non-perturbatively, from first principles. Numerical simulations of QCD on discrete lattices is a large and mature field, and a major focus of my research. I am also involved in lattice simulations of non-QCD strongly interacting gauge theories. In particular, I am an active member of the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration, which uses lattice methods to carry out non-perturbative studies of strongly interacting theories that may shed light on dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking.
Publications [spires]
Lattice determination of the strange electroweak form factors of the nucleon, with Ronald Babich, Richard Brower, Michael A. Clark, George Fleming, James Osborn and Claudio Rebbi, in preparation (2009).
Lattice study of ChPT beyond QCD, with Ethan T. Neil et al. (LSD Collaboration), Proceedings of Science CD09:088 (2009).
Toward TeV Conformality, with Thomas Appelquist et al. (LSD Collaboration), submitted to Physical Review Letters (2009) [arXiv:0910.2224].
Improved lattice measurement of the critical coupling in phi^4_2 theory, with Will Loinaz, Physical Review D79:056008 (2009) [arXiv:0902.0045].
Moebius Algorithm for Domain Wall and GapDW Fermions, with Richard Brower, Ronald Babich, Kostas Orginos, Claudio Rebbi and Pavlos Vranas, Proceedings of Science LATTICE 2008:034 (2008) [arXiv:0906.2813].
Unpublished reports and presentations
Exploring Electroweak Symmetry Breaking on the Lattice, 13 October 2009.
Electroweak Symmetry Breaking: An enduring mystery of the standard model of particle physics, and how we hope to solve it, Amherst College Colloquium, 1 October 2009.
S Parameter Notes, 25 August 2009.
Technicolor at the LHC, Boston University LHC Physics Symposium, 30 April 2009.
LHC Exotica: Overview of Alternative Signatures, 6 April 2009.
Computational modelling of DNA structure, 31 December 2008.
Zero-temperature Ising-Glauber dynamics in two dimensions, 18 December 2007.
Interdisciplinary Cluster Computing at a Liberal Arts College, with Scott Kaplan, William Loinaz and James Hagadorn, AAPT Topical Conference on Computational Physics for Upper Level Courses, Davidson College, 27-28 July 2007.
Correlation functions in scalar quantum field theory in two and four dimensions, 7 May 2007.
Lattice Simulations of Nonperturbative Quantum Field Theories, B.A. Honors Thesis, Amherst College (advisor: William Loinaz), 12 May 2006.
Top Quark Physics at the Large Hadron Collider, Five College Symposium, University of Massachusetts, 1 October 2005.
Miscellany
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Last updated 13 November 2009.
