Richard Kenway

Research interests

My research explores non-perturbative aspects of theories of elementary particles using computer simulation of lattice gauge theories, particularly the strong interactions of quarks and gluons described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD).

I led UK participation in the QCDOC project to build three 10 teraflop/s computers to simulate QCD, jointly with the USA and Japan, and these machines operated successfully from 2004 to 2011. I am the principal investigator on grants for a follow-on project with IBM and Columbia University to build and exploit a 1 petaflop/s prototype BlueGene/Q computer, which was installed at the University of Edinburgh in 2011.

My current research interest is electroweak symmetry breaking to try to understand whether a more fundamental explanation of the Higgs boson is possible. Specifically, I am investigating whether it is possible to construct the Standard Model by localising the gauge fields on a four-dimensional brane in five-dimensional space-time and connections with AdS-CFT duality.

Lagrangian Dynamics (level 10)

Richard has featured in the following recent School news stories:

Recent publications