---
abstract: 'Some important problems in quantitative QCD will certainly yield to hard work and adequate investment of resources, others appear difficult but may be accessible, and still others will require essentially new ideas. Here I identify several examples in each class.'
address: |
    Center for Theoretical Physics\
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology\
    Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
author:
- 'Frank Wilczek [^1]'
title: 'Opportunities, Challenges, and Fantasies in Lattice QCD'
---

There has been a notable renaissance of interest and progress in QCD over the last few years. This has come about for many reasons, including

-   a vigorous experimental program in heavy ion physics explicitly devoted to exhibiting the fundamental dynamics of quark and gluon degrees of freedom and to recreating conditions last seen in the Universe at $\sim 10^{-2}$ s following the Big Bang,

-   a vigorous experimental program in heavy quark physics, including measurements of fundamental CP violation and weak mixing parameters, that requires accurate theoretical calculation of strong matrix elements to reach its full potential,

-   creative developments in finite temperature theory, effective field theory, and numerical algorithms that dovetail beautifully with these experimental programs,

-   realization that high density is a regime of QCD in which weak 