Book Description

The research supported by this grant is aimed at probing the limits of the Standard Model through precision low-energy nuclear physics. The work of the PI (AWL) and additional personnel is to provide theory input needed for a number of potentially high-impact experiments, notably, hadronic parity violation, Dark Matter direct detection and searches for permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) in nucleons and nuclei. In all these examples, a quantitative understanding of low-energy nuclear physics from the fundamental theory of strong interactions, Quantum Chromo-Dynamics (QCD), is necessary to interpret the experimental results. The main theoretical tools used and developed in this work are the numerical solution to QCD known as lattice QCD (LQCD) and Effective Field Theory (EFT). This grant is supporting a new research program for the PI, and as such, needed to be developed from the ground up. Therefore, the first fiscal year of this grant, 08/01/2014-07/31/2015, has been spent predominantly establishing this new research effort. Very good progress has been made, although, at this time, there are not many publications to show for the effort. After one year, the PI accepted a job at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, so this final report covers just a single year of five years of the grant.