NSF Reviewer 2020
What is the potential for the proposed activity to
advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields (Intellectual Merit); and
The NSAC long range plan for 2015 does not specify solving Faddeev equations for Nd scattering as an interest. The authors did suggest an impact of a D(n,2n) calculation for diagnosing the physics conditions of the capsule that is irradiated by laser beams at the National Ignition Facility. It was not clear how critical those calculations are to the facility thereby strengthening an argument for the advancement of knowledge and understanding. Figure 1 compares data for Ay from 1987 to their recent calculations showing a big departure from both experiment and the predictions from the Bochum group at angles less than 90 degrees. The comparison of their results for elastic scattering is much better with other calculations but may fall short of the low precision data compared to data precision in Figure 1. While the work illustrated in figure 2 is comparable to previous work, the work shown in figure 1 does not seem to be an improvement on past work. The proposal would be strengthened if the departure in figure 1 can be used to illustrate and advancement of knowledge and understanding in the field. As a result I would characterize the potential of the proposed activity as moderate.
benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (Broader Impacts)?
The NSAC long range plan does identify the training of students in high performance computing as a need. The proposed training of students in this proposal appears to use FORTRAN as the training environment. The use of this language may actually be a dis-service to students who wish to enter the high performance computing field. The long range plan specifically identifies a need to collaborate with groups that develop computing hardware architectures. This proposal would have benefited from an investigation into porting their FORTRAN codes to take advantage of new computing hardware. While I suspect that the FORTRAN algorithms developed by the proposed work create a foundation for students, the proposal would be strengthened if it would involve more modern languages and algorithms that allow the students to have stronger ties to the needs of society. The proposal's broader impacts appears to only mention outreach activities in passing while the bulk of the proposal describes the impact on undergraduate and graduates physics students. The proposal would be strengthened if more detail is given describing their planned outreach activities and how those activities specifically benefit society.
To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?
The proposal's inclusion of the Coulomb force can lead to potentially transformative concepts on the role a charge independent symmetry breaking.
Is the plan for carrying out the proposed activities well-reasoned, well-organized, and based on a sound rationale? Does the plan incorporate a mechanism to assess success?
How well qualified is the individual, team, or institution to conduct the proposed activities?
The group has a clear record demonstrating their ability to perform the proposed calculations.
Are there adequate resources available to the PI (either at the home institution or through collaborations) to carry out the proposed activities?
The PI seems to have sufficient hardware available to perform the calculations.