Hank Thacker

The study of elementary particles and their interactions has been refined and made precise by the development of the Standard Model, which describes all nongravitational interactions of all the known elementary particles in terms of the unifying principle of gauge invariance. The Standard Model is a gauge field theory, which can be viewed as a generalization of Quantum Electrodynamics. The study of the Standard Model, particularly the interactions of quarks and gluons, can be carried out using a combination of analytic methods and large scale computer calculations. Professor Thacker´s work has focused on the use of a lattice formulation of gauge theory to study properties of the Standard Model. The lattice formulation of the model provides both conceptual and computational advantages which allow important phenomena in particle physics (such as quark confinement, chiral symmetry breaking, and topological properties of gauge theory) to be studied quantitatively from first principles.