The strong nuclear force is governed by an elegant mathematical framework called quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The building blocks of QCD are quarks and gluons, and the interactions of these constituents leads to a rich variety of observed phenomena, from the basic properties of nuclei to the production mechanisms of heavy elements in stars. A particularly intriguing aspect of QCD physics is the nature and behavior of resonances, short lived states that decay via the strong force. In this talk I will discuss progress in studying these states by combining field theoretic ideas with large scale computer simulations. I will describe the path toward precision calculations of resonance properties—extracting scattering and transition amplitudes and resonance form factors, for varying quark masses—in a model-independent approach called lattice QCD.
