Light hardon properties with improved staggered quarks

Quark mass dependence of pseudo-scalar masses and coupling constants qq+q Collaboration

We present results for ${f}_{B},$ ${f}_{{B}_{s}},$ ${f}_{D},$ ${f}_{{D}_{s}}$ and their ratios in the presence of two flavors of light sea quarks ${(N}_{f}=2).$ We use Wilson light valence quarks and Wilson and static heavy valence quarks; the sea quarks are simulated with staggered fermions. Additional quenched simulations with nonperturbatively improved clover fermions allow us to improve our control of the continuum extrapolation. For our central values the masses of the sea quarks are not extrapolated to the physical u, d masses; that is, the central values are ``partially quenched.'' A calculation using ``fat-link clover'' valence fermions is also discussed but is not included in our final results. We find, for example, ${f}_{B}{=190(7)(}_{\ensuremath{-}17}^{+24}{)(}_{\ensuremath{-}2}^{+11}{)(}_{\ensuremath{-}0}^{+8})\mathrm{MeV},$ ${f}_{{B}_{s}}{/f}_{B}{=1.16(1)(2)(2)(}_{\ensuremath{-}0}^{+4}),$ ${f}_{{D}_{s}}{=241(5)(}_{\ensuremath{-}26}^{+27}{)(}_{\ensuremath{-}4}^{+9}{)(}_{\ensuremath{-}0}^{+5})\mathrm{MeV},$ and ${f}_{B}{/f}_{{D}_{s}}{=0.79(2)(}_{\ensuremath{-}4}^{+5}{)(3)(}_{\ensuremath{-}0}^{+5}),$ where in each case the first error is statistical and the remaining three are systematic: the error within the partially quenched ${N}_{f}=2$ approximation, the error due to the missing strange sea quark and to partial quenching, and an estimate of the effects of chiral logarithms at small quark mass. The last error, though quite significant in decay constant ratios, appears to be smaller than has been recently suggested by Kronfeld and Ryan, and Yamada. We emphasize, however, that as in other lattice computations to date, the lattice $u,d$ quark masses are not very light and chiral log effects may not be fully under control.

We update our determinations of f D + , f D s , f K , and quark mass ratios from simulations with four flavors of HISQ dynamical quarks.The availability of ensembles with light quarks near their physical mass means that we can extract physical results with only small corrections for valence-and sea-quark mass mistunings instead of a chiral extrapolation.The adjusted valencequark masses and lattice spacings may be determined from an ensemble-by-ensemble analysis, and the results for the quark mass ratios then extrapolated to the continuum limit.Our central values of the charmed meson decay constants, however, come from an alternative analysis, which uses staggered chiral perturbation theory for the heavy-light mesons, and allows us to incorporate data at unphysical quark masses where statistical errors are often smaller.A jackknife analysis propagated through all of these steps takes account of the correlations among all the quantities used in the analysis.Systematic errors from the finite spatial size and EM effects are estimated by varying the parameters in the analysis, and systematic errors from the assumptions in the continuum extrapolation are estimated from the spread of values from different extrapolations.

We investigate the mass differences of charm and bottom heavy baryons, using MILC lattice gauge configurations with 2+1 dynamical sea quark flavors. We extend our previous work to three lattice spacings: fine (a~0.09), coarse (a~0.12), and medium-coarse (a~0.15) ensembles. For extrapolations and interpolations, we apply simultaneous quadratic fits and simple linear fits with the full QCD data points for the valence quark masses as well as the sea quark masses.

Partially quenched chiral perturbation theory and numerical simulations

We present the final analysis of the light and strange hadron spectra from a full QCD lattice simulation with two degenerate dynamical sea quark flavours at $\beta = 5.6$ on a $16^3 \times 32$ lattice. Four sets of sea quark masses corresponding to the range $.69 \leq m_\pi/m_\rho \leq .83$ are investigated. For reference we also ran a quenched simulation at $\beta_{\sf eff} = 6.0$, which is the point of equal lattice spacing, $a_{\rho}^{-1}$. In the light sector, we find the chiral extrapolation to physical u- and d- masses to present a major source of uncertainty, comparable to the expected size of unquenching effects. From linear and quadratic fits we can estimate the errors on the hadron masses made from light quarks to be on a 15 % level prior to the continuum extrapolation. For the hadrons with strange valence quark content, the $N_F = 2$ approximation to QCD appears not to cure the well-known failure of quenched QCD to reproduce the physical $K-K^*$ splitting.

We have simulated QCD using 2+1 flavors of domain wall quarks on a $(2.74 {\rm fm})^3$ volume with an inverse lattice scale of $a^{-1} = 1.729(28)$ GeV. The up and down (light) quarks are degenerate in our calculations and we have used four values for the ratio of light quark masses to the strange (heavy) quark mass in our simulations: 0.217, 0.350, 0.617 and 0.884. We have measured pseudoscalar meson masses and decay constants, the kaon bag parameter $B_K$ and vector meson couplings. We have used SU(2) chiral perturbation theory, which assumes only the up and down quark masses are small, and SU(3) chiral perturbation theory to extrapolate to the physical values for the light quark masses. While next-to-leading order formulae from both approaches fit our data for light quarks, we find the higher order corrections for SU(3) very large, making such fits unreliable. We also find that SU(3) does not fit our data when the quark masses are near the physical strange quark mass. Thus, we rely on SU(2) chiral perturbation theory for accurate results. We use the masses of the $\Omega$ baryon, and the $\pi$ and $K$ mesons to set the lattice scale and determine the quark masses. We then find $f_\pi = 124.1(3.6)_{\rm stat}(6.9)_{\rm syst} {\rm MeV}$, $f_K = 149.6(3.6)_{\rm stat}(6.3)_{\rm syst} {\rm MeV}$ and $f_K/f_\pi = 1.205(0.018)_{\rm stat}(0.062)_{\rm syst}$. Using non-perturbative renormalization to relate lattice regularized quark masses to RI-MOM masses, and perturbation theory to relate these to $\bar{\rm MS}$ we find $ m_{ud}^{\bar{\rm MS}}(2 {\rm GeV}) = 3.72(0.16)_{\rm stat}(0.33)_{\rm ren}(0.18)_{\rm syst} {\rm MeV}$ and $m_{s}^{\bar{\rm MS}}(2 {\rm GeV}) = 107.3(4.4)_{\rm stat}(9.7)_{\rm ren}(4.9)_{\rm syst} {\rm MeV}$.

We update our previous results for (pseudo-)scalar mesons at zero temperature and finite quark chemical potential and generalize the investigation to include (axial-)vector mesons. We determine bound-state properties such as meson masses and decay constants up to chemical potentials far in the first-order coexistence region. To extract the bound-states properties, we solve the Bethe-Salpeter equation and utilize Landau-gauge quark and gluon propagators obtained from a coupled set of (truncated) Dyson-Schwinger equations with N_{text{ f }}=2+1 dynamical quark flavors at finite chemical potential and vanishing temperature. For multiple (pseudo-)scalar and (axial-)vector mesons, we observe constant masses and decay constants for chemical potentials up to the coexistence region of the first-order phase transition thus verifying explicitly the Silver-Blaze property of QCD. Inside the coexistence region the pion becomes more massive and its decay constants decrease, whereas corresponding quantities for the (axial-)vector mesons remain (almost) constant.

We determine masses and decay constants of heavy-heavy and heavy-charm pseudoscalar mesons as a function of heavy quark mass using a fully relativistic formalism known as highly improved staggered quarks for the heavy quark. We are able to cover the region from the charm quark mass to the bottom quark mass using MILC ensembles with lattice spacing values from 0.15 fm down to 0.044 fm. We obtain ${f}_{{B}_{c}}=0.427(6)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$; ${m}_{{B}_{c}}=6.285(10)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$ and ${f}_{{\ensuremath{\eta}}_{b}}=0.667(6)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$. Our value for ${f}_{{\ensuremath{\eta}}_{b}}$ is within a few percent of ${f}_{\ensuremath{\Upsilon}}$, confirming that spin effects are surprisingly small for heavyonium decay constants. Our value for ${f}_{{B}_{c}}$ is significantly lower than potential model values being used to estimate production rates at the LHC. We discuss the changing physical heavy-quark mass dependence of decay constants from heavy-heavy through heavy-charm to heavy-strange mesons. A comparison between the three different systems confirms that the ${B}_{c}$ system behaves in some ways more like a heavy-light system than a heavy-heavy one. Finally we summarize current results on decay constants of gold-plated mesons.

We provide the analytic predictions for the flavor non-singlet scalar correlator, which will enable determination of the scalar meson mass from the lattice scalar correlator. We consider simulations with 2+1 staggered sea quarks and staggered or chiral valence quarks. At small u/d masses the correlator is dominated by the bubble contribution, which is the intermediate state with two pseudoscalar mesons. We determine the bubble contribution within Staggered and Mixed Chiral Perturbation Theory. Its effective mass is smaller than the mass M_pi+M_eta, which is the lightest intermediate state in proper 2+1 QCD. The unphysical effective mass is a consequence of the taste breaking that makes possible the intermediate state with mass 2*M_pi. We find that the scalar correlator can be negative in the simulations with mixed quark actions if the sea and valence quark masses are tuned by matching the pion masses M_{val,val}=M_{pi_5}.

Low energy chiral lagrangian parameters for scalar and pseudoscalar mesons

We present an update on ongoing work to extract pseudoscalar and vector decay constants for $B^{(*)}$, $B^{(*)}_s$ and $B^{(*)}_c$ mesons and determine phenomenologically-interesting ratios such as $f_{B_s}/f_B$ or $f_{B^*}/f_B$. Our calculation is based on ${\rm N_f}=2+1$ dynamical flavour gauge field ensembles generated by the RBC/UKQCD collaborations using domain-wall fermions and the Iwasaki gauge action. Using domain-wall light, strange, and charm quarks and relativistic $b$ quarks, we obtain results at multiple lattice spacings and valence quark masses.

We present a preliminary lattice determination of the masses and decay constants of the pseudoscalar and vector mesons $B_c$ and $B_c^*$. Our analysis is based on the gauge configurations produced by the European Twisted Mass Collaboration with $N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ flavors of dynamical quarks. We simulated at three different values of the lattice spacing and with pion masses as small as 210 MeV. Heavy-quark masses are simulated directly on the lattice up to $\sim 3$ times the physical charm mass. The physical b-quark mass is reached using the ETMC ratio method. Our preliminary results are: $M_{B_c} = 6341\,(60)$ MeV, $f_{B_c} = 396\,(12)$ MeV, $M_{B_c^*} / M_{B_c} = 1.0037\,(39)$ and $f_{B_c^*} / f_{B_c} = 0.987\,(7)$.

We report on our study of QCD thermodynamics with 2 ¡ 1 flavors of dynamical quarks.In this proceeding we present several thermodynamic quantities and our recent calculation of the critical temperature.In order to investigate the thermodynamic properties of QCD near the continuum limit we adopt improved staggered (p4) quarks coupled with tree-level Symanzik improved glue on N t ¢ 4 and 6 lattices.The simulations are performed with a physical value of the strange quark mass and light quark masses which are in the range of m q £ m s ¢ 0¤ 05 ¥ 0¤ 4. The lightest quark mass corresponds to a pion mass of about 150 MeV.

The SU(3) flavour symmetry breaking expansion in up, down and strange quark masses is extended from hadron masses to meson decay constants. This allows a determination of the ratio of kaon to pion decay constants in QCD. Furthermore when using partially quenched valence quarks the expansion is such that SU(2) isospin breaking effects can also be determined. It is found that the lowest order SU(3) flavour symmetry breaking expansion (or Gell-Mann–Okubo expansion) works very well. Simulations are performed for 2+1 flavours of clover fermions at four lattice spacings.