Objectives

The network's principal objective is the evaluation of non-perturbative effects for a wide variety of physical processes and fundamental quantities. The main scientific objectives are:

• To calculate experimentally well-known quantities in light and heavy hadron phenomenology to an accuracy better than 5% within the quenched approximation.
• To calculate the same phenomenological quantities with dynamical fermions included. In particular, the network will study quantities which are very sensitive to sea quark effects, e.g. flavour singlet quantities like the π-N σ term, structure functions and quark masses.
• To predict phenomenological quantities which are still to be determined well in experiment. The network will focus on heavy quark phenomenology. In particular, the network aims to calculate the semi-leptonic form factors of B decays. In addition, the network will determine masses of hadrons, such as glueballs and hybrids.
• To develop techniques for, and perform preliminary studies of, phenomenological quantities currently beyond our capabilities. This includes the form factors for non-leptonic K and B decays.

In order for this scientific programme to succeed a number of technical objectives must also be met. These are:

• Development of algorithms for the fast generation of gluon field configurations with improved actions and including sea quarks.
• Development of techniques for non-perturbative matching of important lattice operators to their continuum counterparts.
• Development of quark actions on the lattice with exact chiral symmetry in order to allow physical u and d quarks to be simulated.
• Development of techniques for multi-hadron final states (B and K non-leptonic decays).

The training objectives of the programme are:

• to provide basic expertise in quantum field theory, lattice simulations and computational techniques
• to provide specialised knowledge in the areas of advanced computational techniques, numerical algorithms, mathematical aspects of quantum field theory and particle physics phenomenology
• to develop the communication, presentation and management skills of the young researchers