Exploration of sea quark effects in two-flavor QCD with the O( a)-improved Wilson quark action

Abstract

We explore sea quark effects in the light hadron mass spectrum in a simulation of two-flavor QCD using the nonperturbatively O( a)-improved Wilson fermion action. In order to identify finite-size effects, light meson masses are measured on 12 3 × 48, 16 3 × 48 and 20 3 × 48 lattices with a ∼ 0.1 fm. On the largest lattice, where the finite-size effect is negligible, we find a significant increase of the strange vector meson mass compared to the quenched approximation. We also investigate the quark mass dependence of pseudoscalar meson masses and decay constants and test the consistency with (partially quenched) chiral perturbation theory.