Demystifying the Lattice (Hopefully)

Balint Joo

To the best of our knowledge the world is described by Gauge Theories. While perturbation theories have been highly successful in electromagnetic, electroweak and high energy QCD calculations, in the low energy limit in QCD, perturbation theory fails. The lattice approach is a non-perturbative technology allowing low energy QCD calculations to be carried out with some caveats. By discussing the geometry of classical gauge theories, I discuss the formulation of lattice QCD. To highlight some of the problems of the lattice I discuss the fermion doubling problem. If time permits (and if I write it by Wednesday) I will then discuss what is involved in an actual lattice Monte Carlo calculation, and briefly outline what physical questions may be answered by such computations.