Nucleon electromagnetic form factors from lattice QCD using a nearly physical pion mass

Abstract

We present lattice QCD calculations of nucleon electromagnetic form factors using pion masses $m_\pi$ = 149, 202, and 254 MeV and an action with clover-improved Wilson quarks coupled to smeared gauge fields, as used by the Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal collaboration. Particular attention is given to removal of the effects of excited state contamination by calculation at three source-sink separations and use of the summation and generalized pencil-of-function methods. The combination of calculation at the nearly physical mass $m_\pi$ = 149 MeV in a large spatial volume ($m_\pi L_s$ = 4.2) and removal of excited state effects yields agreement with experiment for the electric and magnetic form factors $G_E(Q^2)$ and $G_M(Q^2)$ up to $Q^2$ = 0.5 GeV$^2$.