Physics: Fully Funded PhD STFC and Swansea University in The Centre Vortices as Confinement Mechanisms in QCD

There is a great deal of interest in the nature of QCD, the strong interaction force of particle physics. It has a fascinating personality - in all but the most exotic situations, it confines quarks together into hadrons such as protons and neutrons with a force of 15 tonnes (the weight of 3 elephants), but at large temperatures >1012C such as occurred just after the Big Bang, it is feeble and hadrons fall apart.

How confinement works in QCD, and how temperature affects it is not understood mathematically. Unsurprisingly, it is the subject of intense research and a $1M Millennium Prize. There are however a number of interesting, insightful ideas which may point to a more profound understanding. One of these is "Centre Vortices''. These are the non-perturbative part of the gluonic fields and distil important topological structures thought to contain the essence of confinement.

This project will use a first-principles approach in which large-scale simulations of QCD are performed on a discretised “lattice” version of space and time, similar to the finite difference approach in computational fluid dynamics. Using this Lattice QCD method, Centre Vortex fields will be analysed to understand particles called glueballs and the temperature effects of confinement.

The project will be based on performing computational simulations and theoretical calculations of QCD. It will involve applying quantum field theory and computational methods to understand the nature of the confinement mechanism of QCD. 

Funding Details

Funding Comment

This scholarship covers the full cost of UK tuition fees and an annual stipend of £19,237.

Additional research expenses of up to £1,000 per year will also be available.

Scholarship open to UK and international fee-eligible applicants. 

STFC DTP studentships are available to home and international students. Up to 30% of our cohort can comprise international students, once the limit has been reached, we are unable to make offers to international students.    

We are still accepting applications from international applicants.  

International students will not be charged the fee difference between the UK and international rates.

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