We compute finite volume effects relevant for lattice QCD simulations using background fields. Focusing on constant electric and magnetic fields on a periodic lattice, we determine volume corrections to pion two-point functions using chiral perturbation theory. Among such corrections are the finite volume shifts to the electric and magnetic polarizabilities, which are numerically shown to be non-negligible. We additionally find that all terms in the single-particle effective action can be renormalized by infrared effects. This includes Born couplings to the pion current and total charge-squared, which can be renormalized due to the nature of gauge invariance on a torus.
We use chiral perturbation theory to study the extraction of pion electromagnetic polarizabilities from lattice QCD. Chiral extrapolation formulae are derived for partially quenched QCD, and quenched QCD simulations. On a torus, volume dependence of electromagnetic observables is complicated by SO(4) breaking, as well as photon zero-mode interactions. We determine finite volume corrections to the Compton scattering tensor of pions. We argue, however, that such results cannot be used to ascertain volume corrections to polarizabilities determined in lattice QCD with background field methods. Con…
Pionless effective field theory in a finite volume (FVEFT$_{π\!/}$) is investigated as a framework for the analysis of multi-nucleon spectra and matrix elements calculated in lattice QCD (LQCD). By combining FVEFT$_{π\!/}$ with the stochastic variational method, the spectra of nuclei with atomic number $A\in\{2,3\}$ are matched to existing finite-volume LQCD calculations at heavier-than-physical quark masses corresponding to a pion mass $m_π=806$ MeV, thereby enabling infinite-volume binding energies to be determined using infinite-volume variational calculations. Based on the variational wave…
We solve the coupled system of Dyson-Schwinger and Bethe-Salpeter equations for the quark propagator and the pion Bethe-Salpeter amplitude on a finite volume. To this end we use a truncation scheme that includes pion cloud effects in the quark propagator and light mesons. We study volume effects in the quark condensate, the pion mass and the pion decay constant and compare to corresponding results in other approaches. In general we find large effects for volumes below V=(1.8 fm)^4.
We investigate the utility of partially twisted boundary conditions in lattice calculations of meson observables. For dynamical simulations, we show that the pion dispersion relation is modified by volume effects. In the isospin limit, we demonstrate that the pion electromagnetic form factor can be computed on the lattice at continuous values of the momentum transfer. Furthermore, the finite volume effects are under theoretical control for extraction of the pion charge radius.
We present a calculation of the charged pion electric polarizability using the background field method. To extract the mass-shift induced by the electric field for the accelerated charged particle we fit the lattice QCD correlators using correlators derived from an effective model. The methodology outlined in this study (boundary conditions, fitting procedure, etc.) is designed to ensure that the results are invariant under gauge transformations of the background field. We apply the method to four $N_f=2$ dynamical ensembles to extract $α_{π^\pm}$ at pion mass of $315$ MeV.
We derive an asymptotic formula a la Luscher for the finite volume correction to the pion decay constant: this is expressed as an integral over the < 3 π| A_μ|0 > amplitude after proper subtraction of the pion pole contribution. We analyze the formula numerically at leading and next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion.
We evaluate the pion mass in finite volume to two loops within Chiral Perturbation Theory. The results are compared with a recently proposed extension of the asymptotic formula of Luscher. We find that contributions, which were neglected in the latter, are numerically very small at the two-loop level and conclude that for Mpi*L>2, L>2fm the finite volume effects in the meson sector are analytically well under control.
Finite-volume pionless effective field theory provides an efficient framework for the extrapolation of nuclear spectra and matrix elements calculated at finite volume in lattice QCD to infinite volume, and to nuclei with larger atomic number. In this work, it is demonstrated how this framework may be implemented via a set of correlated Gaussian wavefunctions optimised using differentiable programming and via solution of a generalised eigenvalue problem. This approach is shown to be significantly more efficient than a stochastic implementation of the variational method based on the same form of…
We calculate the pion and kaon electromagnetic form factors in finite volume for a generic momentum transfer in space-like region, using SU(3) chiral perturbation theory. To this end, we first find the hadronic matrix element in a new form which is suitable for our calculation in finite volume. We present our numerical findings for the chiral behavior and finite volume corrections and compare these for pion and kaon form factors. As a result, for the pion electromagnetic form factor we find the finite volume correction $ΔF^π_{em} = 0.0041$ at momentum transfer $q^2 = -0.1358$ and for the kaon …
We investigate how Lüscher's relation between the finite-volume energy of two pions at rest and pion scattering lengths has to be modified in quenched QCD. We find that this relation changes drastically, and in particular, that ``enhanced finite-volume corrections" of order $L^0=1$ and $L^{-2}$ occur at one loop ($L$ is the linear size of the box), due to the special properties of the $η'$ in the quenched approximation. We define quenched pion scattering lengths, and show that they are linearly divergent in the chiral limit. We estimate the size of these various effects in some numerical examp…
I present higher loop order results for several calculations in Chiral perturbation Theory. 1) Two-loop results at finite volume for hadronic vacuum polarization. 2) A three-loop calculation of the pion mass and decay constant in two-flavour ChPT. For the pion mass all needed auxiliary parameters can be determined from lattice calculations of $ππ$-scattering. 3) Chiral corrections to neutron-anti-neutron oscillations.
We determine the relative pion mass shift $M_π(L)/M_π-1$ due to the finite spatial extent $L$ of the box by means of two-flavor chiral perturbation theory and the one-particle Lüscher formula. We use as input the expression for the infinite volume $ππ$ forward scattering amplitude up to next-to-next-to-leading order and can therefore control the convergence of the chiral series. A comparison to the full leading order chiral expression for the pion mass in finite volume allows us to check the size of subleading terms in the large-$L$ expansion.
We calculate the scalar semileptonic kaon decay in finite volume at the momentum transfer $t_{m} = (m_{K} - m_π)^2$, using chiral perturbation theory. At first we obtain the hadronic matrix element to be calculated in finite volume. We then evaluate the finite size effects for two volumes with $L = 1.83 fm$ and $L= 2.73 fm$ and find that the difference between the finite volume corrections of the two volumes are larger than the difference as quoted in \cite{Boyle2007a}. It appears then that the pion masses used for the scalar form factor in ChPT are large which result in large finite volume co…
Using the framework of non-relativistic effective field theory, the finite-volume ground-state energy shift is calculated up-to-and-including $O(L^{-6})$ for the system of three pions in the channel with the total isospin $I=1$. The relativistic corrections are included perturbatively, up to the same order in the inverse of the box size $L$. The obtained explicit expression, together with the known result for the system with maximal isospin $I=3$, can be used for the extraction of two independent effective three-body couplings from the measured ground-state spectrum of three pions.
We propose an alternative approach to Lüscher's formula for extracting two-body scattering phase shifts from finite volume spectra with no reliance on the partial wave expansion. We use an effective-field-theory-based Hamiltonian method in the plane wave basis and decompose the corresponding matrix elements of operators into irreducible representations of the relevant point groups. The proposed approach allows one to benefit from the knowledge of the long-range interaction and avoids complications from partial wave mixing in a finite volume. We consider spin-singlet channels in the two-nucleon…
The physics of pions within a finite volume is explored using lattice regularized chiral perturbation theory. This regularization scheme permits a straightforward computational approach to be used in place of analytical continuum techniques. Using the pion mass, decay constant, form factor and charge radius as examples, it is shown how numerical results for volume dependences are obtained at the one-loop level from simple summations.
The ground state energy of a collection of n pions and m kaons with short range interactions is calculated for a volume with finite spatial extent L and periodic boundary conditions. This calculation is accomplished to order L^-6 in the large volume expansion. With this result one can extract the various two- and three-body interactions between pions and kaons from lattice QCD data.
We calculate the volume dependence of the ground-state energy of n identical bosons with short-range repulsive interactions in a periodic spatial volume of side L, up to and including terms of order 1/L^6. With this result, Lattice QCD calculations of the ground-state energies of three or more pions will allow for a systematic extraction of the three-pion interaction at this order in the volume expansion.
The aim of this paper is to investigate an efficient strategy that allows to obtain pi-pi phase shifts and rho meson properties from QCD lattice data with high precision. For this purpose we evaluate the levels of the pi-pi system in the rho channel in finite volume using chiral unitary theory. We investigate the dependence on the pi mass and compare with other approaches which use QCD lattice calculations and effective theories. We also illustrate the errors induced by using the conventional Luscher approach instead of a more accurate one recently developed that takes into account exactly the…
We perform a calculation in one-loop chiral perturbation theory of the two-pion matrix elements and correlation functions of an I=0 scalar operator, in finite and infinite volumes for both full and quenched QCD. We show that major difficulties arise in the quenched theory due to the lack of unitarity. Similar problems are expected for quenched lattice calculations of $K \to ππ$ amplitudes with $ΔI=1/2$. Our results raise the important question of whether it is consistent to study $K\toππ$ amplitudes beyond leading order in chiral perturbation theory in quenched or partially quenched QCD.
The ab-initio understanding of hadronic three-body systems above threshold, such as exotic resonances or the baryon spectrum, requires the mapping of the finite-volume eigenvalue spectrum, produced in lattice QCD calculations, to the infinite volume. We present the first application of such a formalism to a physical system in form of three interacting positively charged pions. The results for the ground state energies agree with the available lattice QCD results by the NPLQCD collaboration at unphysical pion masses. Extrapolations to physical pion masses are performed using input from effectiv…
Due to a pion-pole contribution, the nucleon axial current matrix elements can be visualized in position space as becoming delocalized as the chiral limit is approached, with one-third of the current at distance of order the inverse pion mass. However, this delocalization effect will not cause calculations of the axial coupling in a finite system with standard boundary conditions (periodic for boson fields, antiperiodic for fermions) to have large finite volume effects. This is seen by calculating axial coupling using a nonstandard current with axial quantum numbers. The matrix elements of thi…
We evaluate the pion mass in finite volume to two loops within Chiral Perturbation Theory. The results are compared with a recently proposed extension of the asymptotic formula of Luscher. We find that contributions, which were neglected in the latter, are numerically very small at the two-loop level.
It is shown that the strong volume-dependence of the axial charge of the nucleon seen in lattice QCD calculations can be understood quantitatively in terms of the pion-induced interactions between neighbouring nucleons. The associated wave function renormalization leads to an increased suppression of the axial charge as the strength of the interaction increases, either because of a decrease in lattice size or in pion mass.
We perform a fit of the finite-volume QCD spectrum of three pions at maximal isospin to constrain the three-body force. We use the unitarity-based relativistic three-particle quantization condition, with the GWUQCD spectrum obtained at 315 MeV and 220 MeV pion mass in two-flavor QCD. For the heavier pion mass we find that the data is consistent with a constant contact term close to zero, whereas for the lighter mass we see a statistically significant energy dependence in tension with the prediction of leading order ChPT. Our results also suggest that with enough three-body energy levels, the t…
In the chiral limit of QCD, the pion decay constant F can be extracted from lattice gauge theory by means of a coupling to isospin chemical potential. Here we compute the leading correction due to finite volume in the epsilon-expansion of chiral perturbation theory. A comparison is made to recent Monte Carlo data.
We report a first principle lattice calculation of the pion electric polarizability $α_π$ at the physical pion mass. First, we derive the master formula, which relates the pion polarizabilities with the position space hadronic Compton tensor, $\langle π| J_μ(x) J_ν(0) | π\rangle$. The finite volume error of the master formula is exponentially suppressed by the spatial extent of the lattice. Then, the hadronic tensor is calculated using domain wall fermions (DWF) directly at physical pion mass. The gauge ensembles are generated by the RBC-UKQCD collaborations.
Simulating the kappa(800) on the lattice is a challenging task that starts to become feasible due to the rapid progress in recent-years lattice QCD calculations. As the resonance is broad, special attention to finite-volume effects has to be paid, because no sharp resonance signal as from avoided level crossing can be expected. In the present article, we investigate the finite volume effects in the framework of unitarized chiral perturbation theory using next-to-leading order terms. After a fit to meson-meson partial wave data, lattice levels for piK scattering are predicted. In addition, leve…
We present the three-pion spectrum with maximal isospin in a finite volume determined from lattice QCD, including excited states in addition to the ground states across various irreducible representations at zero and nonzero total momentum. The required correlation functions, from which the spectrum is extracted, are computed using a newly implemented algorithm which speeds up the computation by more than an order of magnitude. On a subset of the data we extract a nonzero value of the three-pion threshold scattering amplitude using the $1/L$ expansion of the three-particle quantization conditi…
Using the tadpole improved Wilson quark action on small, coarse and anisotropic lattices, $Kπ$ scattering length in the $I=3/2$ channel is calculated within quenched approximation. The results are extrapolated towards the chiral and physical kaon mass region. Finite volume and finite lattice spacing errors are also analyzed and a result in the infinite volume and continuum limit is obtained. Our result is compared with the results obtained using Roy equations, Chiral Perturbation Theory, dispersion relations and the experimental data.
We report on the MILC Collaboration calculation of electromagnetic effects on light pseudoscalar mesons. The simulations employ asqtad staggered dynamical quarks in QCD plus quenched photons, with lattice spacings varying from 0.12 to 0.06 fm. Finite volume corrections for the MILC realization of lattice electrodynamics have been calculated in chiral perturbation theory and applied to the lattice data. These corrections differ from those calculated by Hayakawa and Uno because our treatment of zero modes differs from theirs. Updated results for the corrections to "Dashen's theorem" are presente…
We calculate the finite volume effects for the pion and nucleon mass. For the pion mass we present the results of a full two-loop calculation in chiral perturbation theory. The outcome shows that the resummed version of the Luscher formula we presented in an earlier work does indeed give an excellent approximation to the two-loop result. In view of this result we apply the same resummed formula to the nucleon mass. In the nucleon sector the extension of the chiral expansion to higher quark masses appears to be more problematic and it is therefore more difficult to make reliable predictions for…
We present a study of the finite-volume two-pion matrix elements and correlation functions of the I=0 scalar operator, in full and partially quenched QCD, at one-loop order in chiral perturbation theory. In partially quenched QCD, when the sea and valence light quark masses are not equal, the lack of unitarity leads to the same inconsistencies as in quenched QCD and the matrix elements cannot be determined. It is possible, however, to overcome this problem by requiring the masses of the valence and sea quarks to be equal for the u and d quarks while keeping the strange quark (s) quenched (or p…
A matrix Hamiltonian model is developed to address the finite-volume effects appearing in studies of baryon resonances in lattice QCD. The Hamiltonian model includes interaction terms in a transparent way, and can be readily generalized to address multi-channel problems. The eigenvalue equation of the model is exactly solvable, and can be matched onto chiral effective field theory. The model is investigated in the case of Delta -> nucleon-pion scattering. A robust method for determining the resonance parameters from lattice QCD is developed. It involves constraining the free parameters of the …
We consider finite volume effects on the electro-magnetic pion form factor near the chiral limit, in the so-called $ε$ regime. The pseudoscalar-vector-pseudoscalar three-point function is calculated in the $ε$ expansion of chiral perturbation theory to the next-to-leading order. In the $ε$ regime, finite volume effects are non-perturbatively large in general. However, we find a way to remove its dominant part, by inserting momenta to the correlators, and taking an appropriate ratio of them. The subleading contribution is, then, shown to be perturbatively small, and one can extract the form fac…
We consider finite volume effects on the electromagnetic form factor of the pion. We compute the peudoscalar-vector-pseudoscalar correlator in the $ε$ expansion of chiral perturbation theory up to the next-to-leading order and find a way to remove the dominant part, which comes from a contribution of the pion zero-mode. Inserting non-zero momentum to relevant operators (or taking a subtraction of the correlators at different time-slices), and taking an appropriate ratio of them, one can automatically cancel the zero-mode's contribution, which becomes non-perturbatively large $\sim \mathcal{O}(…
Two-neutrino double-beta decay of certain nuclear isotopes is one of the rarest Standard Model processes observed in nature. Its neutrinoless counterpart is an exotic lepton-number nonconserving process that is widely searched for to determine if the neutrinos are Majorana fermions. In order to connect the rate of these processes to the Standard Model and beyond the Standard Model interactions, it is essential that the corresponding nuclear matrix elements are constrained reliably from theory. Lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD) and low-energy effective field theories (EFTs) are expected to …
The elastic $I=1$ $p$-wave $ππ$ scattering amplitude is calculated together with the isovector timelike pion form factor using lattice QCD with $N_{\rm f}=2+1$ dynamical quark flavors. Wilson clover ensembles generated by the Coordinated Lattice Simulations (CLS) initiative are employed at four lattice spacings down to $a = 0.05\,\mathrm{fm}$, several pion masses down to $m_π = 200\,\mathrm{MeV}$, and spatial volumes of extent $L = 3.1-5.5\,\mathrm{fm}$. The set of measurements on these ensembles, which is publicly available, enables an investigation of systematic errors due to the finite latt…
We calculate finite volume effects on the pion masses and decay constant in twisted mass lattice QCD (tmLQCD) at finite lattice spacing. We show that the lighter neutral pion in tmLQCD gives rise to finite volume effects that are exponentially enhanced when compared to those arising from the heavier charged pions. We demonstrate that the recent two flavour twisted mass lattice data can be better fitted when twisted mass effects in finite volume corrections are taken into account.
We present a generalization of the relativistic, finite-volume, three-particle quantization condition for non-identical pions in isosymmetric QCD. The resulting formalism allows one to use discrete finite-volume energies, determined using lattice QCD, to constrain scattering amplitudes for all possible values of two- and three-pion isospin. As for the case of identical pions considered previously, the result splits into two steps: The first defines a non-perturbative function with roots equal to the allowed energies, $E_n(L)$, in a given cubic volume with side-length $L$. This function depends…
Electromagnetic polarizabilities are important parameters for understanding the interaction between photons and hadrons. For pions these quantities are poorly constrained experimentally since they can only be measured indirectly. New experiments at CERN and Jefferson Lab are planned that will measure the polarizabilities more precisely. Lattice QCD can be used to compute these quantities directly in terms of quark and gluons degrees of freedom, using the background field method. We present results for the electric polarizability for two different quark masses, light enough to connect to chiral…
Understanding the volume dependence of the triton binding energy is an important step towards lattice simulations of light nuclei. We calculate the triton binding energy in a finite cubic box with periodic boundary conditions to leading order in the pionless effective field theory. Higher order corrections are estimated and the proper renormalization of our results is verified explicitly. We present results for the physical triton as well as for the pion-mass dependence of the triton spectrum near the ``critical'' pion mass, Mpi_c ~ 197 MeV, where chiral effective field theory suggests that th…
We calculate pion mass, pion decay constant, PCAC quark mass and nucleon mass in two flavour lattice QCD with unimproved Wilson fermion and gauge actions. Simulations are performed using DD-HMC algorithm at two lattice spacings and two volumes for several values of the quark mass. The cutoff effects in pion mass and nucleon mass for the explored region of parameter space are found to be negligible. The chiral behaviours of pion mass, pion decay constant and quark condensate are found to be qualitatively consistent with NLO chiral perturbation theory.
The nucleon axial charge is calculated as a function of the pion mass in full QCD. Using domain wall valence quarks and improved staggered sea quarks, we present the first calculation with pion masses as light as 354 MeV and volumes as large as (3.5 fm)^3. We show that finite volume effects are small for our volumes and that a constrained fit based on finite volume chiral perturbation theory agrees with experiment within 7% statistical errors.
The axial charge of the nucleon $g_A$ and the pion decay constant $f_π$ are computed in two-flavor lattice QCD. The simulations are carried out on lattices of various volumes and lattice spacings. Results are reported for pion masses as low as $m_π=130\,\mbox{MeV}$. Both quantities, $g_A$ and $f_π$, suffer from large finite size effects, which to leading order ChEFT and ChPT turn out to be identical. By considering the naturally renormalized ratio $g_A/f_π$, we observe a universal behavior as a function of decreasing quark mass. From extrapolating the ratio to the physical point, we find $g_A^…
We present an exploratory lattice QCD investigation of the differences between the valence quark structure of pion and its radial excitation $π(1300)$ in a fixed finite volume using the leading-twist factorization approach. We present evidences that the first pion excitation in our lattice computation is a single particle state that is likely to be the finite volume realization of $π(1300)$. An analysis with reasonable priors result in better estimates of the excited state PDF and the moments, wherein we find evidence that the radial excitation of pion correlates with an almost two-fold increa…
Knowledge of the electric polarizability is crucial to understanding the interactions of hadrons with electromagnetic fields. The neutron polarizability is very sensitive to the quark mass and is expected to diverge in the chiral limit. Here we present results for the electric polarizability of the neutron, neutral pion, and neutral kaon on eight ensembles with nHYP-smeared clover dynamical fermions with two different pion masses (227 and 306 MeV). These are currently the lightest pion masses used in polarizability studies. For each pion mass we compute the polarizability at four different vol…
The dynamical fluctuations of kaon--to--pion ratios have been studied over a wide range of center--of--mass energies $\sqrt{s}$. Based on changing phase space volume which apparently is the consequence of phase transition from hadrons to quark--gluon plasma at large $\sqrt{s}$, single--particle distribution function $f$ is assumed to be rather modified. Varying $f$ and phase space volume are implemented in the grand--canonical partition function, especially at large $\sqrt{s}$, so that hadron resonance gas model, when taking into account the experimental acceptance and quark phase space occupa…
