Colin Morningstar

Professor, Physics

Education

Ph.D., University of Toronto

Research

My research interests primarily concern nonperturbative phenomena in quantum field theories, with particular emphasis on the study of hadron formation and confinement in quantum chromodynamics using computer simulations of quarks and gluons. Two past highlights include a first comprehensive determination of the glueball spectrum in pure Yang-Mills and the spectrum of heavy-quark hybrid mesons in the leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation (neglecting light quark loops).  My collaborators and I are currently focussing on ab initio determinations of the excited baryon and meson spectra using lattice QCD Monte Carlo methods.  Our computations are carried out on the NSF XSEDE supercomputers and on machines available through the DOE's INCITE program.  Curtis Meyer and I run our own local computing cluster.

Selected Publications

• C. Morningstar, J. Bulava, J. Foley, K. J. Juge, D. Lenkner, M. Peardon, C. H. Wong, Improved stochastic estimation of quark propagation with Laplacian Heaviside smearing in lattice QCD, Physical Review D 83, 114505 (2011)
• J. Bulava, R. G. Edwards, E. Engelson, B. Joó, H-W. Lin, C. Morningstar, D. G. Richards, S. J. Wallace, Nucleon, Δ, and Ω excited state spectra in N_f=2+1 lattice QCD, Physical Review D 82, 014507 (2010)
• M. Peardon et al., A Novel quark-field creation operator construction for hadronic physics in lattice QCD, Physical Review D 80, 054506 (2009)
• J. Bulava et al., Excited state nucleon spectrum with two flavors of dynamical fermions, Physical. Review D 79, 034505 (2009)
• H.W. Lin et al., First results from 2+1 dynamical quark flavors on an anisotropic lattice: light-hadron spectroscopy and setting the strange-quark mass, Physical Review D 79, 034502 (2009)
• Subhasish Basak, R. Edwards, G. Fleming, K. Juge, A. Lichtl, C. Morningstar, D. Richards, I. Sato, S. Wallace, Lattice QCD determination of patterns of excited baryon states, Physical Review D 76, 074504 (2007)
• Y. Chen et al., Glueball spectrum and matrix elements on anisotropic lattices, Physical Review D 73, 014516 (2006)
• S. Basak, R. Edwards, G. Fleming, U. Heller, C. Morningstar, D. Richards, I. Sato, S. Wallace, Group-theoretical construction of extended baryon operators in lattice QCD, Physical Review D 72, 094506 (2005)
• Colin Morningstar, Mike Peardon, Analytic smearing of SU(3) link variables in lattice QCD, Physical Review D 69, 054501 (2004)
• K. Juge, Julius Kuti, Colin Morningstar, Fine Structure of the QCD String Spectrum, Physical Review Letters 90, 161601 (2003)
• S. Collins, C. Davies, J. Hein, G. Lepage, C. Morningstar, J. Shigemitsu, J. Sloan, Scaling and further tests of heavy meson decay constant determinations from nonrelativistic QCD, Physical Review D 63, 034505 (2001)
• K. Juge, J. Kuti, C. Morningstar, Ab Initio Study of Hybrid b̅gb Mesons, Physical Review Letters 82, 4400 (1999)
• Colin Morningstar, Mike Peardon, Glueball spectrum from an anisotropic lattice study, Physical Review D 60, 034509 (1999)
• C. Davies, K. Hornbostel, A. Langnau, G. Lepage, A. Lidsey, C. Morningstar, J. Shigemitsu, J. Sloan, New Determination of the Pole Mass of the b Quark Using Lattice QCD, Physical Review Letters 73, 2654 (1994)