Introduction

This document contains information about my research interests and teaching experience. I have recorded a welcome message in mp3 format. My CV is also on-line.

Research interests

I am working on solving QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) via numerical simulations of lattice QCD. QCD is both a well defined theory and extremely difficult to solve. One set of the fundamental building blocks of matter are called quarks. We would like to study the masses and decay properties of quarks to find evidence for some more profound theory of particle physics than we have now. Unfortunately the quarks interact with each other and other particles via QCD. To study quarks, we need to tame QCD.

Numerical simulations of lattice QCD offer the prospect of "solving" QCD from first principles.

For a general introduction to lattice QCD, I recommend reading the review article written by Rajan Gupta. I have written a review article on hadron spectrscopy that had a target audience of nuclear theorists. (This article is available as part of a book on lattice QCD that is available for a modest price. The UKQCD collaboration also maintains a list of articles about lattice QCD in the popular science press.

You can look at my publications from SPIRES. There is a list of publications with more than 50 citation. There is a list of publications with more than 100 citation.

Specifically, I am interested in:

The calculation of the spectroscopy of exotic hybrid mesons and light singlet 0++ mesons. Exotic hybrid mesons are made from a quark, antiquark and excited glue. For more information on this topic you can read a review article on calculating the mases of exotic light mesons from lattice QCD. I have also written an updated version of that review article. The singlet 0++ mesons are thought to have glueball degrees of freedom (see my recent paper for a discussion).
Semi-leptonic and leptonic decays of the B meson. I worked on the MILC collaboration computation of the decay constants of the B meson. I have recently put out a preprint with my collaborator on looking for chiral logs in the fB decay constant. We have recently reported a result for the mass of the bottom quark from unquenched QCD, that is included in the PDG summary tables. You can look at the MILC collaborations preliminary results on the semi-leptonic decays of the B meson. I have written a review article about heavy quark calculations on the lattice.
Computer tools to take the pain out of numerical simulations. (See my talk on Data storage issues in lattice qcd calculations). I am part of the QCDgrid project run by the UKQCD collaboration. I have written a simple tutorial for running on phenogrid. I am also writing a googlesite about using ganga to submit jobs to compute grids. I made a presentation on using compute grids at the hacklatt09 conference.

I am not interested in quenched QCD calculations! They had there place, but we now need to push down the masses of the sea quarks in unquenched calculations.

I was a member of the MILC collaboration. I am currently a member of the UKQCD collaboration, ETM collaboration and HPQCD collaboration.

I am slowly adding my conference talks to a google maps.

View Larger Map

Below are some recent talks:

I presented a review of the new heavy states at the ichep06 conference in Moscow. Write up for the proceedings
hacklat07 presentations
Photon-hadron physics with the GlueX detector at Jefferson Lab
Nuclear Structure at the Extremes talk
Draft talk for QCD08.
Seminar at Bristol
QCD and bound states Argonne June 15 to 19th
Hacklatt 2009 May 5th to 7th
Charmed Exotics (10 - 12 August 2009) Gemany talk

Up coming talks

Seminar at Bonn

I made the first entry on particle physics phenomenology to wikipedia.

I am currently running at a number of computers around the world.

Teaching experience

While on a temporary lecturship in the department of mathematical sciences at Liverpool, I taught

M181, Mathematical Methods for first year science students.
M326, Relativity. This was a third year undergraduate course in special and general relativity.

I was also a course tutor for the courses M101 (calculus) and M103 (algebra). During the years 1996 and 1998, I taught an intermediate computational physics course at the University of Utah.

At Liverpool, I was a course tutor for COMP101(An introduction to programming in Java) for 4 years. I supervised a 3rd and 4th year mathematical physics project.

At Glasgow I am a course tutor for the physics lectures for the second year undergraduates.

Career history

University of Wuppertal.

2006 - 2009, an advanced SUPA reseach fellowship based in the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow.
2004 - 2006 fixed term lecturer at the University of Liverpool in the department of mathematical sciences.
2002 - 2004 software manager for the UKQCD collaboration, based at the University of Liverpool.
2001 - 2002 physicist programmer at the University of Liverpool working for Prof. Chris Michael and Prof. Alan Irving
1998 - 2001 postdoc at the University of Liverpool working for Prof. Chris Michael and Prof. Alan Irving
1995 - 1998, postdoc at the University of Utah, working for Professor Carleton DeTar
1992 - 1995, postdoc at the University of Kentucky, working for Professor Terry Draper.
1989 - 1992, Graduate studies for PhD at The University of Edinburgh. My supervisors were Dr. Ken Bowler and Dr. Brian Pendleton

Contact information


Dr. Craig McNeile
Department of Physics and Astronomy
The Kelvin Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ
U.K.
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My email address.

You can view my unofficial home page to gain some insight into the non-professional Craig McNeile.

Craig McNeile <mcneile@amtp.liv.ac.uk>

Last modified: Tue Oct 20 09:50:57 2009