Higgs Lecture 2023: From Quarks to Nuclei: the Building Blocks of the Universe

Our understanding of the structure of matter is that protons, neutrons, and nuclei emerge dynamically from the interactions of more fundamental particles described in the Standard Model of particle physics. In this lecture, I will give a broad introduction to the field and an overview of the numerical approach to studying this structure from first principles, before focusing on some specific examples of recent progress and their connection to searches for new physics like dark matter. I will also explain how artificial intelligence algorithms are providing new possibilities in theoretical physics.

Biography: Phiala Shanahan is an Associate Professor of Physics in the Center for Theoretical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She won the 2016 Bragg Gold Medal while a student at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She won the Kenneth G. Wilson Award for Excellence in Lattice Field Theory in 2020, specifically for ‘excellence in the study of hadrons and nuclei in lattice QCD and for pioneering the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to lattice field theory’. In 2021, Phiala Shanahan was awarded the 2021 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award from the American Physical Society. Further honours and awards include a National Science Foundation CAREER award, a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award, an Emmy Noether fellowship and an APS dissertation award.