Physical Pion Mass Research Articles

Nucleon Electric Polarizabilities and Nucleon-Pion Scattering at the Physical Pion Mass.

We present a lattice QCD calculation of the nucleon electric polarizabilities at the physical pion mass. Our findings reveal the substantial contributions of the Nπ states to these polarizabilities. Without considering these contributions, the lattice results fall significantly below the experimental values, consistent with previous lattice studies. This observation has motivated us to compute both the parity-negative Nπ scattering up to a nucleon momentum of ∼0.5 GeV in the center-of-mass frame and corresponding Nγ^{*}→Nπ matrix elements using lattice QCD. Our results confirm that incorporating dynamic Nπ contributions is crucial for a reliable determination of the polarizabilities from lattice QCD. This methodology lays the groundwork for future lattice QCD investigations into various other polarizabilities.

Tritium β decay and proton-proton fusion in pionless effective field theory

The Gamow-Teller and Fermi matrix elements, 〈GT〉 and 〈F〉, respectively, for tritium β decay are calculated to next-to-leading order (NLO) in pionless effective field theory in the absence of Coulomb interactions and isospin violation giving the leading order predictions 〈GT〉0=0.9807 and 〈F〉0=1. Using an experimentally determined value for the tritium β decay GT matrix element, the two-body axial current low energy constant is fixed at NLO yielding L1,A=6.01±2.08fm3 at the renormalization scale of the physical pion mass, which agrees with predictions based on naive dimensional analysis. The impact of L1,A on proton-proton fusion is also discussed. Finally, the consequences of Wigner-SU(4) spin-isospin symmetry are considered for the Gamow-Teller matrix element. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Systematic improvement of x -dependent unpolarized nucleon generalized parton distributions in lattice-QCD calculation

We present a first study of the effects of renormalization-group resummation (RGR) and leading-renormalon resummation (LRR) on the systematic errors of the unpolarized isovector nucleon generalized parton distribution in the framework of large-momentum effective theory. This work is done using lattice gauge ensembles generated by the MILC Collaboration, consisting of 2+1+1 flavors of highly improved staggered quarks with a physical pion mass at lattice spacing a≈0.09 fm and a box width L≈5.76 fm. We present results for the nucleon H and E generalized parton distributions (GPDs) with average boost momentum Pz≈2 GeV at momentum transfers Q2=[0,0.97] GeV2 at skewness ξ=0 as well as Q2∈0.23 GeV2 at ξ=0.1, renormalized in the modified minimal subtraction (MS¯) scheme at scale μ=2.0 GeV, with two- and one-loop matching, respectively. We demonstrate that the simultaneous application of RGR and LRR significantly reduces the systematic errors in renormalized matrix elements and distributions for both the zero and nonzero skewness GPDs, and that it is necessary to include both RGR and LRR at higher orders in the matching and renormalization processes. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Kaon mixing beyond the standard model with physical masses

We present nonperturbative results for beyond the standard model kaon mixing matrix elements in the isospin symmetric limit (mu=md) of QCD, including a complete estimate of all dominant sources of systematic error. Our results are obtained from numerical simulations of lattice QCD with Nf=2+1 flavors of dynamical domain wall fermions. For the first time, these quantities are simulated directly at the physical pion mass mπ∼139 MeV for two different lattice spacings. We include data at three lattice spacings in the range a=0.11–0.07 fm and with pion masses ranging from the physical value up to 450 MeV. Compared to our earlier work, we have added both direct calculations at physical quark masses and a third lattice spacing making the removal of discretization effects significantly more precise and eliminating the need for any significant mass extrapolation beyond the range of simulated data. We renormalize the lattice operators nonperturbatively using RI-SMOM off-shell schemes. These schemes eliminate the need to model and subtract nonperturbative pion poles that arises in the RI-MOM scheme and, since the calculations are performed with domain wall fermions, the unphysical mixing between chirality sectors is suppressed. Our results for the bag parameters in the MS¯ scheme at 3 GeV are BK≡B1=0.5240(17)(54), B2=0.4794(25)(35), B3=0.746(13)(17), B4=0.897(02)(10) and B5=0.6882(78)(94), where the first error is from lattice uncertainties and the second is the uncertainty due to the perturbative matching to MS¯. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Lattice QCD calculation of the pion distribution amplitude with domain wall fermions at physical pion mass

We present a direct lattice QCD calculation of the x-dependence of the pion distribution amplitude (DA), which is performed using the quasi-DA in large momentum effective theory on a domain-wall fermion ensemble at physical quark masses and spacing a ≈ 0.084 fm. The bare quais-DA matrix elements are renormalized in the hybrid scheme and matched to MS¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\overline{\ extrm{MS}} $$\\end{document} with a subtraction of the leading renormalon in the Wilson-line mass. For the first time, we include threshold resummation in the perturbative matching onto the light-cone DA, which resums the large logarithms in the soft gluon limit at next-to-next-to-leading log. The resummed results show controlled scale-variation uncertainty within the range of momentum fraction x ∈ [0.25, 0.75] at the largest pion momentum Pz ≈ 1.85 GeV. In addition, we apply the same analysis to quasi-DAs from a highly-improved-staggered-quark ensemble at physical pion mass and a = 0.076 fm. By comparison we find with 2σ confidence level that the DA obtained from chiral fermions is flatter and lower near x = 0.5.

Gluon moment and parton distribution function of the pion from Nf=2+1+1 lattice QCD

We present the first calculation of the pion gluon moment from lattice QCD in the continuum-physical limit. The calculation is done using clover fermions for the valence action with three pion masses, 220, 310 and 690 MeV, and three lattice spacings, 0.09, 0.12, and 0.15 fm, using ensembles generated by MILC Collaboration with 2+1+1 flavors of highly improved staggered quarks (HISQ). On the lattice, we nonperturbatively renormalize the gluon operator in RI/MOM scheme using the cluster-decomposition error reduction (CDER) technique to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio of the renormalization constant. We extrapolate the pion gluon moment to the continuum-physical limit and obtain ⟨x⟩g=0.394(58)stat+NPR(39)mixing in the MS¯ scheme at 2 GeV, with first error being the statistical error and uncertainties in nonperturbative renormalization, and the second being a systematic uncertainty estimating the effect of ignoring quark mixing. Our pion gluon momentum fraction has a central value lower than two recent single-ensemble lattice-QCD results near physical pion mass but is consistent with the recent global fits by JAM and xFitter and with most QCD-model estimates. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Precision Calculation of the Electromagnetic Radii of the Proton and Neutron from Lattice QCD

We present lattice-QCD results for the electromagnetic form factors of the proton and neutron including both quark-connected and -disconnected contributions. The parametrization of the Q2 dependence of the form factors is combined with the extrapolation to the physical point. In this way, we determine the electric and magnetic radii and the magnetic moments of the proton and neutron. For the proton, we obtain at the physical pion mass and in the continuum and infinite-volume limit ⟨rE2⟩p=0.820(14) fm, ⟨rM2⟩p=0.8111(89) fm, and μMp=2.739(66), where the errors include all systematics. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Baryon Electric Charge Correlation as a Magnetometer of QCD.

The correlation between net baryon number and electric charge, χ_{11}^{BQ}, can serve as a magnetometer of QCD. This is demonstrated by lattice QCD computations using the highly improved staggered quarks with physical pion mass of M_{π}=135 MeV on N_{τ}=8 and 12 lattices. We find that χ_{11}^{BQ} along the transition line starts to increase rapidly with magnetic field strength eB≳2M_{π}^{2} and by a factor 2 at eB≃8M_{π}^{2}. Furthermore, the ratio of electric charge chemical potential to baryon chemical potential, μ_{Q}/μ_{B}, shows significant dependence on the magnetic field strength and varies from the ratio of electric charge to baryon number in the colliding nuclei in heavy ion collisions. These results can provide baselines for effective theory and model studies, and both χ_{11}^{BQ} and μ_{Q}/μ_{B} could be useful probes for the detection of magnetic fields in relativistic heavy ion collision experiments as compared with corresponding results from the hadron resonance gas model.

Hadronic physics from a Wilson fermion mixed-action approach: charm quark mass and D(s)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$D_{(s)}$$\\end{document} meson decay constants

We present our first set of results for charm physics, using the mixed-action setup introduced in a companion paper [1]. Maximally twisted Wilson valence fermions are used on a sea of non-perturbatively O(a)-improved Wilson fermions, made up by CLS Nf=2+1\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$N_\\mathrm {\\scriptstyle f}=2+1$$\\end{document} ensembles. Our charm-sector observables are free from O(amc)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$O(am_c)$$\\end{document} discretisation effects, without need of tuning any improvement coefficient, and show continuum-limit scaling properties consistent with leading cutoff effects of O(a2)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$O(a^2)$$\\end{document}. We consider a subset of CLS ensembles – including four values of the lattice spacing and pion masses down to 200 MeV – allowing to take the continuum limit and extrapolate to the physical pion mass. A number of techniques are incorporated in the analysis in order to estimate the systematic uncertainties of our results for the charm quark mass and the D(s)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$D_{(s)}$$\\end{document}-meson decay constants. This first study of observables in the charm sector, where the emphasis has been on the control of the methodology, demonstrates the potential of our setup to achieve high-precision results.

Trace anomaly form factors from lattice QCD

The hadron mass can be obtained through the calculation of the trace of the energy-momentum tensor in the hadron which includes the trace anomaly and sigma terms. The anomaly due to conformal symmetry breaking is believed to be an important ingredient for hadron mass generation and confinement. In this work, we will present the calculation of the glue part of the trace anomaly form factors of the pion up to Q2∼4.3 GeV2 and the nucleon up to Q2∼1 GeV2. The calculations are performed on a domain wall fermion ensemble with overlap valence quarks at seven valence pion masses varying from ∼250 to ∼540 MeV, including the unitary point ∼340 MeV. We calculate the radius of the glue trace anomaly for the pion and the nucleon from the z expansion. By performing a two-dimensional Fourier transform on the glue trace anomaly form factors in the infinite momentum frame with no energy transfer, we also obtain their spatial distributions for several valence quark masses. The results are qualitatively extrapolated to the physical valence pion mass with systematic errors from the unphysical sea quark mass, discretization effects in the renormalization sum rule, and finite-volume effects to be addressed in the future. We find the pion’s form factor changes sign, as does its spatial distribution, for light quark masses. This explains how the trace anomaly contribution to the pion mass approaches zero toward the chiral limit. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Lattice QCD Calculation of Electroweak Box Contributions to Superallowed Nuclear and Neutron Beta Decays.

We present the first lattice QCD calculation of the universal axial γW-box contribution □_{γW}^{VA} to both superallowed nuclear and neutron beta decays. This contribution emerges as a significant component within the theoretical uncertainties surrounding the extraction of |V_{ud}| from superallowed decays. Our calculation is conducted using two domain wall fermion ensembles at the physical pion mass. To construct the nucleon four-point correlation functions, we employ the random sparsening field technique. Furthermore, we incorporate long-distance contributions to the hadronic function using the infinite-volume reconstruction method. Upon performing the continuum extrapolation, we arrive at □_{γW}^{VA}=3.65(7)_{lat}(1)_{PT}×10^{-3}. Consequently, this yields a slightly higher value of |V_{ud}|=0.973 86(11)_{exp}(9)_{RC}(27)_{NS}, reducing the previous 2.1σ tension with the CKM unitarity to 1.8σ. Additionally, we calculate the vector γW-box contribution to the axial charge g_{A}, denoted as □_{γW}^{VV}, and explore its potential implications.

Cut structures and an observable singularity in the three-body threshold dynamics: The Tcc+ case

The three-body threshold effect, the distinctive and intriguing nonperturbative dynamics in the low-energy hadron-hadron scattering, has acquired compelling significance in the wake of the recent observation of the double-charm tetraquark Tcc+. This dynamics is characterized by the emergence of singular points and branch cuts within the interaction potential, occurring when the on-shell condition of the mediated particle is satisfied. The presence of these potential singularities indicates that the system is no longer Hermitian and also poses intractable challenges in obtaining exact solutions for dynamical scattering amplitudes. In this work, we develop a complex scaled Lippmann-Schwinger equation as an operation of analytical continuation of the T matrix to resolve this problem. Through a practical application to the DD*→DD* process, we reveal complicated cut structures of the three-body threshold dynamics in the complex plane, primarily stemming from the one-pion exchange. Notably, our methodology succeeds in reproducing the Tcc+ structure, in alignment with the quasibound pole derived from the complex scaling method within the Schrödinger equation framework. More remarkably, after solving the on-shell T matrix on the positive real axis of momentum plane, we find an extra new structure in the DD* mass spectrum, which arises from a right-hand cut at a physical pion mass and should be observable in lattice QCD simulations and future high-energy experiments. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Moments of nucleon unpolarized, polarized, and transversity parton distribution functions from lattice QCD at the physical point

The second Mellin moments ⟨x⟩ of the nucleon’s unpolarized, polarized, and transversity parton distribution functions are computed. Two lattice QCD ensembles at the physical pion mass are used: these were generated using a tree-level Symanzik-improved gauge action and 2+1 flavor tree-level improved Wilson Clover fermions coupling via 2-level HEX-smearing. The moments are extracted from forward matrix elements of local leading twist operators. We determine renomalization factors in RI-(S)MOM and match to MS¯ at scale 2 GeV. Our findings show that operators that exhibit vanishing kinematics at zero momentum can have significantly reduced excited-state contamination. The resulting polarized moment is used to quantify the longitudinal contribution to the quark spin-orbit correlation. All our results agree within two sigma with previous lattice results. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Improved analysis of isovector nucleon matrix elements with Nf=2+1 flavors of O(a) improved Wilson fermions

We present an update of our determination of the isovector charges gAu−d, gSu−d and gTu−d, and the isovector twist-2 forward matrix elements ⟨x⟩u−d, ⟨x⟩Δu−Δd and ⟨x⟩δu−δd on the Nf=2+1 gauge ensembles generated by the Coordinated Lattice Simulations (CLS) effort. We have significantly extended our coverage of the parameter space by adding ensembles at the physical pion mass and fine lattice spacing, at nearly physical pion masses and very fine lattice spacings, and at very large physical lattice volumes, enabling a well-controlled extrapolation to the physical point. Another major improvement is achieved owing to the extended range of source-sink separations, which allows us to perform two-state fits to summed correlator ratios, leading to a much higher level of control over excited-state effects. Systematic uncertainties from the chiral, continuum and infinite-volume extrapolations are incorporated via model averages based on the Akaike information criterion. Our final results at the physical point are gAu−d=1.254(19)stat(15)sys[24]total, gSu−d=1.203(77)stat(81)sys[112]total, gTu−d=0.993(15)stat(05)sys[16]total, ⟨x⟩u−d=0.153(15)stat(10)sys[17]total, ⟨x⟩Δu−Δd=0.207(15)stat(06)sys[16]total, and ⟨x⟩δu−δd=0.195(17)stat(15)sys[23]total. While our results for the isovector charges are in excellent agreement with the FLAG 21 averages, we note that our error for the tensor charge gTu−d is considerably smaller. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Pion valence quark distribution at physical pion mass of N f = 2 + 1 + 1 lattice QCD

We present a state-of-the-art calculation of the unpolarized pion valence-quark distribution in the framework of large-momentum effective theory (LaMET) with improved handling of systematic errors as well as two-loop perturbative matching. We use lattice ensembles generated by the MILC collaboration at lattice spacing a ≈ 0.09 fm, lattice volume 643 × 96, N f = 2 + 1 + 1 flavors of highly-improved staggered quarks and a physical pion mass. The LaMET matrix elements are calculated with pions boosted to momentum P z ≈ 1.72 GeV with high-statistics of O(106) measurements. We study the pion PDF in both hybrid-ratio and hybrid-regularization-independent momentum subtraction (hybrid-RI/MOM) schemes and also compare the systematic errors with and without the addition of leading-renormalon resummation (LRR) and renormalization-group resummation (RGR) in both the renormalization and lightcone matching. The final lightcone PDF results are presented in the modified minimal-subtraction scheme at renormalization scale μ = 2.0 GeV. We show that the x-dependent PDFs are compatible between the hybrid-ratio and hybrid-RI/MOM renormalization with the same improvements. We also show that systematics are greatly reduced by the simultaneous inclusion of RGR and LRR and that these methods are necessary if improved precision is to be reached with higher-order terms in renormalization and matching.

Collins-Soper kernel from lattice QCD at the physical pion mass

Collins-Soper kernel from lattice QCD at the physical pion mass

Low-lying baryon masses using twisted mass fermions ensembles at the physical pion mass

Low-lying baryon masses using twisted mass fermions ensembles at the physical pion mass

Pion valence-quark generalized parton distribution at physical pion mass

We present the first lattice-QCD x-dependent pion valence-quark generalized parton distribution (GPD) calculated directly at physical pion mass using the Large-Momentum Effective Theory (LaMET) with next-to-next-to-leading order perturbative matching correction. We use clover fermions for the valence action on 2+1+1 flavors of highly improved staggered quarks (HISQ), generated by MILC Collaboration, with lattice spacing a≈0.09 fm and box size L≈5.5 fm; the pion two-point measurements number up to O(106) with boost momentum 1.73 GeV. The pion valence distribution is renormalized in hybrid scheme with Wilson-line mass subtraction at large distances in coordinate space, followed by a procedure to match it to the MS‾ scheme. We focus on the zero-skewness limit, where the GPD has a probability-density interpretation in the longitudinal Bjorken x and the transverse impact-parameter distributions. We take the integral of our GPD functions to generate leading moment so that we can make comparisons with past lattice-QCD and experimental determinations of the pion form factors and found consistent agreement among them. We predict the higher GPD moments and reveal x-dependent tomography of the pion for the first time using lattice QCD.

Erratum: Isospin 0 and 2 two-pion scattering at physical pion mass using all-to-all propagators with periodic boundary conditions in lattice QCD [Phys. Rev. D 107 , 094512 (2023)

Erratum: Isospin 0 and 2 two-pion scattering at physical pion mass using all-to-all propagators with periodic boundary conditions in lattice QCD [Phys. Rev. D <b>107</b> , 094512 (2023)

Isospin 0 and 2 two-pion scattering at physical pion mass using all-to-all propagators with periodic boundary conditions in lattice QCD

A study of two-pion scattering for the isospin channels, $I=0$ and $I=2$, using lattice QCD is presented. M\"obius domain wall fermions on top of the Iwasaki-DSDR gauge action for gluons with periodic boundary conditions are used for the lattice computations which are carried out on two ensembles of gauge field configurations generated by the RBC and UKQCD collaborations with physical masses, inverse lattice spacings of 1.023 and 1.378 GeV, and spatial extents of $L=4.63$ and 4.58 fm, respectively. The all-to-all propagator method is employed to compute a matrix of correlation functions of two-pion operators. The generalized eigenvalue problem (GEVP) is solved for a matrix of correlation functions to extract phase shifts with multiple states, two pions with a non-zero relative momentum as well as two pions at rest. Our results for phase shifts for both $I=0$ and $I=2$ channels are consistent with and the Roy Equation and chiral perturbation theory, though at this preliminary stage our errors for $I=0$ are large. An important outcome of this work is that we are successful in extracting two-pion excited states, which are useful for studying $K\to\pi\pi$ decay, on physical-mass ensembles using GEVP.