Alice and the Cat, a special moment in the history of the Universe, and some Apes, too

by Dr M. P. Lombardo (INFN - Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati)

Monday 5 May 2008, 14:30 → 16:30 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

The CAT - Computer Aided Theoretical physics - has a long record of successes on the Apes, the INFN dedicated supercomputers. One popular CAT study concerns the first appearance of hadrons in the Universe, about 50 microseconds after the Big Bang, when it became 'cold ' enough (two trillion Kelvin) to allow quarks to get bound into neutrons and protons. A baby version of this epochal event will be produced at the LHC and observed by the ALICE experiment. CAT studies re-create - 'simulate', in the usual jargon for us these realities, and in this talk I would like to explain how. The discussion includes a description of the underlying physics theories, and the user's point of view on their implementation and analysis on the APE computers.

Slides lombardo.pdf