Chiral dynamics with strange quarks in the light of recent lattice simulations

Abstract

Several lattice collaborations performing simulations with 2+1 light dynamical quarks have experienced difficulties in fitting their data with standard N f = 3 chiral expansions at next-to-leading order, yielding low values of the quark condensate and/ or the decay constant in the N f = 3 chiral limit. A reordering of these expansions seems required to analyse these data in a consistent way. We discuss such a reordering, known as Resummed Chiral Perturbation Theory, in the case of pseudoscalar masses and decay constants, pion and kaon electromagnetic form factors and K ℓ3 form factors. We show that it provides a good fit of the recent results of two lattice collaborations (PACS-CS and RBC/UKQCD). We describe the emerging picture for the pattern of chiral symmetry breaking, marked by a strong dependence of the observables on the strange quark mass and thus a significant difference between chiral symmetry breaking in the N f = 2 and N f =3 chiral limits. We discuss the consequences for the ratio of decay constants F K /F π and the K ℓ3 form factor at vanishing momentum transfer.