Vol. 2 No. 10 (2026)

Colorful image of M&Ms in a regular rectangular grid on top of a green fabric. The image is meant to evoke ideas of different colors of quarks on a spacetime lattice as imagined during lattice quantum chromodynamics.

From the cover: Lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a physics tool which discretizes the continuous world onto a 4D spacetime lattice. In this issue, David Pevzner describes his independent research to simulate lattice QCD, using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to evaluate the pion correlation function. The Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation states that the squared pion mass should be proportional to the sum of the masses of the up and down quarks; Pevzner tests this relationship computationally. Quarks are tiny, fundamental building blocks of matter and combine to form larger subatomic particles. In the cover image, the array of milk chocolate M&Ms evokes the idea of the lattice, while the colors allude to the types and colors of quarks. Cover image: Dennis Evangelista.

Published: 2026-08-06