The background field method has been used successfully to determine hadron electromagnetic polarizabilities. Recently questions have been raised regarding the proper way to deal with the electric field on the lattice. In this paper, we show how the presence of a background electric field affects the quark hopping matrix. We use this formulation to carry out simulations on quenched configurations, and we present the results for neutron electric polarizability for pion masses as low as $500\MeV$. We find that the polarizability is roughly constant for the quark masses considered, $α\sim 1.5 \times 10^{-4} \fm^3$. While the polarizability is positive, it is significantly smaller than the experimental value due to the fact that the quark masses used are too large.
We propose a method based on the Schrödinger functional for computing on the lattice the gauge invariant effective action for external background fields. We check this method by studying the U(1) lattice gauge theory in presence of a constant magnetic background field.
Dirac operators in non-trivial topology backgrounds in a finite box are reviewed. We analyze how the formalism translates to the lattice, with special emphasis on uniform field backgrounds.
Lattice gauge theory with a background gauge field is shown to be renormalizable to all orders of perturbation theory. No additional counterterms are required besides those already needed in the absence of the background field. The argument closely follows the treatment given earlier for the case of dimensional regularization by Kluberg-Stern and Zuber. It is based on the BRS, background gauge and shift symmetries of the lattice functional integral.
We present the first numerical implementation of the minimal Landau background gauge for Yang-Mills theory on the lattice. Our approach is a simple generalization of the usual minimal Landau gauge and is formulated for general SU(N) gauge group. We also report on preliminary tests of the method in the four-dimensional SU(2) case, using different background fields. Our tests show that the convergence of the numerical minimization process is comparable to the case of a null background. The uniqueness of the minimizing functional employed is briefly discussed.
We show that hadronic matrix elements can be extracted from lattice simulations with background fields that arise from operator exponentiation. Importantly, flavour-singlet matrix elements can be evaluated without requiring the computation of disconnected diagrams, thus facilitating a calculation of the quark contribution to the spin of the proton and the singlet axial coupling, $g_A^0$. In the two nucleon sector, a background field approach will allow calculation of the magnetic and quadrupole moments of the deuteron and an investigation of the EMC effect directly from lattice QCD. Matrix ele…
We study $U_A$(1) anomaly of non-perturbative QCD in the maximally abelian gauge on SU(2) lattice. The existence of the strong correlation between QCD-monopoles and instantons in the abelian gauge is shown by both analytic and numerical works including lattice simulations. These results bring us a conjecture that the $U_A$(1) symmetry would be explicitly broken in the background fields dominated by QCD-monopoles. We find an evidence for our conjecture by measuring the chiral-asymmetric zero modes of the Dirac operator in the backgrounds of QCD-monopoles.
The critical quark mass, at which the renormalised mass vanishes, is computed in the Schrodinger functional scheme with a non vanishing background field at one-loop order of perturbation theory. Further one-loop calculations are done for the renormalisation constant of the pseudo scalar density and for several discretisation errors and compared to results obtained with a vanishing background field.
The conventional parametrizations of lattice static interquark force are shown to produce a mismatch of coupling constant near the matching point R_m \approx 0.2 fm. The running coupling constant of the background perturbation theory yields instead a selfconsistent description of lattice data over all interval of distances, 0.05 fm \la R \la 1.1.fm, and is an analytic function with the property of asymptotic freedom at small R and it is freezing at large R.
We address the problem of numerical simulations in the background non-trivial topology in the chiral Schwinger model. An effective fermionic action is derived which is in accord with established analytical results, and which satisfies the anomaly equation. We describe a numerical evaluation of baryon number violating amplitudes, specifically the 't Hooft vertex.
The magnetic moment and magnetic polarisability of the neutron and proton are investigated using the uniform background-field method and lattice QCD. The results are calculated using 32^3 x 64 dynamical QCD lattices provided by the PACS-CS collaboration through the ILDG. Methods of isolating the energy of the hadrons accounting for Landau level energies are explored. Effective energy shifts are formed from combinations of correlation functions and their efficiency in isolating the magnetic moment and polarisability terms is determined.
We show how to compute electromagnetic polarizabilities of charged hadrons without the use of background fields in lattice QCD. The low-energy behavior of the Compton scattering amplitude is matched to matrix elements of current-current correlation functions on the lattice. Working in momentum space, formulas for electric polarizability ($α_E$) and magnetic polarizability ($β_M$) are derived for both charged pion and proton. Lattice four-point correlation functions are constructed from quark and gluon fields to be used in Monte-Carlo simulations. We also draw attention to the potential of four…
We compare the behavior of different lattice Dirac operators in gauge backgrounds which are lattice discretizations of a classical instanton. In particular we analyze the standard Wilson operator, a chirally improved Dirac operator and the overlap operators constructed from these two operators. We discuss the flow of real eigenvalues as a function of the instanton size. An analysis of the eigenvectors shows that overlap fermions with the Wilson operator as input operator have difficulties with reproducing the continuum zero mode already for moderately small instantons. This problem is greatly …
The vacuum dynamics of SU(2) and SU(3) lattice gauge theories is studied by means of a gauge-invariant effective action defined using the lattice Schrödinger functional at finite temperature. In the case of the SU(3) gauge theory numerical simulations are performed both at zero and finite temperature. The vacuum is probed using an external constant Abelian chromomagnetic field. At zero temperature, in agreement with our previous studies for the SU(2) theory, the external field is totally screened in the continuum limit. At finite temperature numerical data suggest that confinement is restored …
We present the first application of the background field method to Non-Relativistic QCD (NRQCD) on the lattice in order to determine the one-loop radiative corrections to the coefficients of the NRQCD action in a manifestly gauge-covariant manner. The coefficient of the $σ\cdot B$ term in the NRQCD action is computed at the one-loop level; the resulting shift of the hyperfine splitting of bottomonium is found to bring the lattice predictions in line with experiment.
We analyze topological charge contributions from classical SU(2) center vortices with shapes of planes and spheres using different topological charge definitions, namely the center vortex picture of topological charge, a discrete version of FF in the plaquette and hypercube definitions and the lattice index theorem. For the latter the zeromodes of the Dirac operator in the fundamental and adjoint representations using both the overlap and asqtad staggered fermion formulations are investigated. We find several problems for the individual definitions and discuss the discrepancies between the dif…
We calculate the probability distributions of quarks in the ground state of the proton, and how they are affected in the presence of a constant background magnetic field. We focus on wave functions in the Landau and Coulomb gauges. We observe the formation of a scalar u-d diquark clustering. The overall distortion of the quark probability distribution under a very large magnetic field, as demanded by the quantisation conditions on the field, is quite small. The effect is to elongate the distributions along the external field axis while localizing the remainder of the distribution.
Finite temperature SU(2) lattice gauge theory is investigated in a 3D cubic box with fixed boundary conditions provided by a discretized, static BPS monopole solution with varying core scale $μ$. Using heating and cooling techniques we establish that for discrete $μ$-values stable classical solutions either of self-dual or of pure magnetic type exist inside the box. Having switched on quantum fluctuations we compute the Polyakov line and other local operators. For different $μ$ and at varying temperatures near the deconfinement transition we study the influence of the boundary condition on the…
We discuss recent results and future prospects regarding the investigation, by lattice simulations, of the non-perturbative properties of QCD and of its phase diagram in presence of magnetic or chromomagnetic background fields. After a brief introduction to the formulation of lattice QCD in presence of external fields, we focus on studies regarding the effects of external fields on chiral symmetry breaking, on its restoration at finite temperature and on deconfinement. We conclude with a few comments regarding the effects of electromagnetic background fields on gluodynamics.
We propose a new method that by using the lattice Schrödinger functional allows to investigate the effective action for external background fields in lattice gauge theories. We show that this method gives sensible results for the case of four-dimensional U(1) gauge theory in an external constant magnetic field.
A calculational scheme for obtaining the electric polarizability of the neutron in lattice QCD with dynamical quarks is developed, using the background field approach. The scheme differs substantially from methods previously used in the quenched approximation, the physical reason being that the QCD ensemble is no longer independent of the external electromagnetic field in the dynamical quark case. One is led to compute (certain integrals over) four-point functions. Particular emphasis is also placed on the physical role of constant external gauge fields on a finite lattice; the presence of the…
We apply the background field (BF) method to Non-Relativistic QCD (NRQCD) on the lattice in order to determine the one-loop radiative corrections to the coefficients of the NRQCD action in a manifestly gauge-covariant manner by matching the NRQCD prediction for particular on-shell processes with those of relativistic continuum QCD. We explain how the BF method is implemented in automated perturbation theory and discuss the technique for matching the relativistic and non-relativistic theories. We compute the one-loop radiative corrections to the sigma.B and Darwin terms for the NRQCD action cur…
Growing evidence indicates that in the continuum limit the rooted staggered action is in the correct QCD universality class, the non-local terms arising from taste breaking can be viewed as lattice artifacts. In this paper we consider the 2-flavor Asqtad staggered action at a lattice spacing of approximately 0.13 fm and probe the properties of the staggered configurations by an overlap valence Dirac operator. By comparing the distribution of the overlap eigenmodes to continuum QCD predictions we investigate if/when the lattice artifacts are small as a function of the staggered quark mass. We d…
Electromagnetic properties of hadrons can be computed by lattice simulations of QCD in background fields. We demonstrate new techniques for the investigation of charged hadron properties in electric fields. Our current calculations employ large electric fields, motivating us to analyze chiral dynamics in strong QED backgrounds, and subsequently uncover surprising non-perturbative effects present at finite volume.
We present an algorithm to automatically derive Feynman rules for lattice perturbation theory in background field gauge. Vertices with an arbitrary number of both background and quantum legs can be derived automatically from both gluonic and fermionic actions. The algorithm is a generalisation of our earlier algorithm based on prior work by Lüscher and Weisz. We also present techniques allowing for the parallelisation of the evaluation of the often rather complex lattice Feynman rules that should allow for efficient implementation on GPUs, but also give a significant speed-up when calculating …
We determine the patterns of spontaneous symmetry breaking in strong-coupling lattice QCD in a fixed background baryon density. We employ a next-nearest-neighbor fermion formulation that possesses the SU(N_f)xSU(N_f) chiral symmetry of the continuum theory. We find that the global symmetry of the ground state varies with N_f and with the background baryon density. In all cases the condensate breaks the discrete rotational symmetry of the lattice as well as part of the chiral symmetry group.
We show that the fermion determinant for 2-D Wilson lattice fermions coupled to an external scalar field is equivalent to self avoiding loops interacting with the external field. In an application of the resulting formula we integrate the scalar field with a Gaussian action to generate the N-component Gross-Neveu model. The loop representation for this model is discussed.
Lattice field theory is a very powerful tool to study Feynman's path integral non-perturbatively. However, it usually requires Euclidean background metrics to be well-defined. On the other hand, a recently developed regularization scheme based on Fourier integral operator $ζ$-functions can treat Feynman's path integral non-pertubatively in Lorentzian background metrics. In this article, we formally $ζ$-regularize lattice theories with Lorentzian backgrounds and identify conditions for the Fourier integral operator $ζ$-function regularization to be applicable. Furthermore, we show that the clas…
Nucleon properties are investigated in background electric fields. As the magnetic moments of baryons affect their relativistic propagation in constant electric fields, electric polarizabilities cannot be determined without knowledge of magnetic moments. This is analogous to the experimental situation, for which determination of polarizabilities from the Compton amplitude requires subtraction of Born terms. With the background field method, we devise combinations of nucleon correlation functions in constant electric fields that isolate magnetic moments and electric polarizabilities. Using an e…
Nonuniform background electromagnetic fields, once implemented in lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations of hadronic systems, provide a means to constrain a large class of electromagnetic properties of hadrons and nuclei, from their higher electromagnetic moments and charge radii to their electromagnetic form factors. We show how nonuniform fields can be constructed on a periodic hypercubic lattice under certain conditions and determine the precise form of the background U(1) gauge links that must be imposed on the quantum chromodynamics gauge-field configurations to maintain periodicity.…
The intention of these lecture notes is to outline the basics of lattice hadron spectroscopy to students from other fields of physics, e.g. from experimental particle physics, who do not necessarily have a background in quantum field theory. After a brief motivation and discussion of QCD, it is explained, how QCD can in principle be solved numerically using lattice QCD. The main part of these lecture notes is concerned with quantum numbers of hadrons, corresponding hadron creation operators, and how the mass of a hadron can be determined from a temporal correlation function of such operators. …
We compute the ratio Lambda_L/Lambda_MS, where the scale parameter Lambda_L is associated with a lattice formulation of QCD. We consider a 3-parameter family of gluon actions, which are most frequently used for O(a) improvement a` la Symanzik. The gluon action is put togeter with standard discretizations for fermions (Wilson/clover, overlap), to provide Lambda_L for several possible combinations of fermion and gluon actions. We employ the background field technique in order to calculate the 1PI 2-point function of the background field; this leads to the coupling constant renormalization functi…
We show that the partition function of many classical models with continuous degrees of freedom, e.g. abelian lattice gauge theories and statistical mechanical models, can be written as the partition function of an (enlarged) four-dimensional lattice gauge theory (LGT) with gauge group U(1). This result is very general that it includes models in different dimensions with different symmetries. In particular, we show that a U(1) LGT defined in a curved spacetime can be mapped to a U(1) LGT with a flat background metric. The result is achieved by expressing the U(1) LGT partition function as an i…
We report on a lattice calculation demonstrating a novel new method to extract the electric polarizability of charged pseudo-scalar mesons by analyzing two point correlation functions computed in classical background electric fields.
We investigate numerically the effect of regulating fermions in the presence of singular background fields in three dimensions. For this, we couple free lattice fermions to a background compact U(1) gauge field consisting of a monopole-anti-monopole pair of magnetic charge $\pm Q$ separated by a distance $s$ in a periodic $L^3$ lattice, and study the low-lying eigenvalues of different lattice Dirac operators under a continuum limit defined by taking $L\to\infty$ at fixed $s/L$. As the background gauge field is parity even, we look for a two-fold degeneracy of the Dirac spectrum that is expecte…
We study characteristic features of the eigenvalues of the Wilson-Dirac operator in topologically non-trivial gauge field configurations by examining complete spectra of the fermion matrix. In particular we discuss the role of eigenvectors with real eigenvalues as the lattice equivalents of the continuum zero-modes. We demonstrate, that those properties of the spectrum which correspond to non-trivial topology are stable under adding fluctuations to the gauge fields. The behavior of the spectrum in a fully quantized theory is discussed using QED_2 as an example.
Based on the Ginsparg-Wilson relation, a gauge invariant formulation of electroweak SU(2)xU(1) gauge theory on the lattice is considered. If the hypercharge gauge coupling is turned off in the vacuum sector of the U(1) gauge fields, the theory consists of four left-handed SU(2) doublets and it is possible, as in vector-like theories, to make the fermion measure defined globally in all topological sectors of SU(2). We then try to incorporate U(1) gauge field, following Lüscher's reconstruction theorem. The global integrability condition is proved for ``gauge loops'' in the space of the U(1) gau…
We show that inconsistency between background field methods, which are relevant for lattice QCD spectroscopy, and effective field theory matching conditions, which are obtained from scattering amplitudes, can be resolved by augmenting nonrelativistic QED with operators related by the equations of motion. To determine the coefficients of such operators, we perform the nonrelativistic expansion of QED for a spin-half hadron including non-minimal electromagnetic couplings. As an effective field theory framework could provide a valuable tool to analyze lattice QCD correlation functions in external…
Chiral perturbation theory makes definitive predictions for the extrinsic behavior of hadrons in external electric and magnetic fields. Near the chiral limit, the electric and magnetic polarizabilities of pions, kaons, and nucleons are determined in terms of a few well-known parameters. In this limit, hadrons become quantum mechanically diffuse as polarizabilities scale with the inverse square-root of the quark mass. In some cases, however, such predictions from chiral perturbation theory have not compared well with experimental data. Ultimately we must turn to first principles numerical simul…
The magnetic fields generated in non-central heavy-ion collisions are among the strongest fields produced in the Universe, reaching magnitudes comparable to the scale of the strong interactions. Backed by model simulations, the resulting field is expected to be spatially modulated, deviating significantly from the commonly considered uniform profile. To improve our understanding of the physics of quarks and gluons under such extreme conditions, we use lattice QCD simulations with $2+1$ staggered fermion flavors with physical quark masses and an inhomogeneous magnetic background for a range of …
The set-up of the QCD Schrödinger functional (SF) on the lattice with staggered quarks requires an even number of points $L/a$ in the spatial directions, while the Euclidean time extent of the lattice, $T/a$, must be odd. Identifying a unique renormalisation scale, $L=T$, is then only possible up to O($a$) lattice artefacts. In this article we study such lattices in the pure SU(3) gauge theory, where we can also compare to the standard set-up. We consider the SF coupling as obtained from the variation of an SU(3) Abelian and spatially constant background field. The O($a$) lattice artefacts can…
We compute the current quark mass in the Schrodinger functional with a non-vanishing background field at one loop order of perturbation theory. The results are used to obtain the critical mass at which the renormalized quark mass vanishes, and some lattice artefacts at one loop order.
We investigate the chiral phase structure of three flavor QCD in a background $U(1)$ magnetic field using the standard staggered action and the Wilson plaquette gauge action. We perform simulations on lattices with a temporal extent of $N_τ=4$ and four spatial extents of $N_σ= 8,16, 20$ and 24. We choose a smaller-than-physical quark mass in lattice spacing as $am = 0.030$ such that there exists a crossover transition at vanishing magnetic fields, and adopt two values of magnetic field strength in lattice spacing $a \sqrt{ e{B}}\simeq 1.5$ and 2. We find that the transition becomes stronger in…
On lattice gauge field configurations with 2+1 dynamical quark flavors, we investigate the momentum space quark and gluon propagators in the combined maximally Abelian plus $U(1)_3\times U(1)_8$ Landau gauge. We extract the gluon fields from the lattice link variables and study the diagonal and off-diagonal gluon propagators. We find that the infrared region of the transverse diagonal gluon propagator is strongly enhanced compared to the off-diagonal propagator. The Dirac operator from the Asqtad action is inverted on the diagonal and off-diagonal gluon backgrounds separately. In agreement wit…
We present a calculation of hadron magnetic polarizability using the techniques of lattice QCD. This is carried out by introducing a uniform external magnetic field on the lattice and measuring the quadratic part of a hadron's mass shift. The calculation is performed on a $24^4$ lattice with standard Wilson actions at beta=6.0 (spacing $a=0.1$ fm) and pion mass down to about 500 MeV. Results are obtained for 30 particles covering the entire baryon octet ($n$, $p$, $Σ^0$, $Σ^-$, $Σ^+$, $Ξ^-$, $Ξ^0$, $Λ$) and decuplet ($Δ^0$, $Δ^-$, $Δ^+$, $Δ^{++}$, $Σ^{*0}$, $Σ^{*-}$, $Σ^{*+}$, $Ξ^{*0}$, $Ξ^{*-…
We apply the finite size scaling analysis to the derivative of the density of the effective action for the lattice U(1) pure gauge theory in an external constant magnetic field. We found the presence of a continuous phase transition. Moreover, our extimate of of the critical parameters gives values consistent with those extracted from the analysis of the specific heat.
We study topological aspects of the QCD vacuum structure in SU(2) lattice gauge theory with the abelian gauge fixing. The index of the Dirac operator is measured by using the Wilson fermion in the quenched approximation. We find chiral-asymmetric zero modes in background fields dominated by QCD-monopoles without any cooling.
We present results for the magnetic moment and magnetic polarisability of the neutron and the magnetic moment of the proton. These results are calculated using the uniform background field method on 32^3 x 64 dynamical QCD lattices provided by the PACS-CS collaboration as part of the ILDG. We use a uniform background magnetic field quantised by the periodic spatial volume. We investigate ways to improve the effective energy plots used to calculate magnetic polarisabilities, including the use of correlation matrix techniques with various source smearings.
We explore the energy dependence of $π$ mesons off the background abelian magnetic field on the base of quenched SU(3) lattice gauge theory and calculate the magnetic dipole polarizability of charged and neutral pions for various lattice volumes and lattice spacings. The contribution of the magnetic hyperpolarizability to the neutral pion energy has been also found.
The lattice fermion determinants, in a given background gauge field, are evaluated for two different kinds of random lattices and compared to those of naive and wilson fermions in the continuum limit. While the fermion doubling is confirmed on one kind of lattices, there is positive evidence that it may be absent for the other, at least for vector interactions in two dimensions. Combined with previous studies, arbitrary randomness by itself is shown to be not a sufficient condition to remove the fermion doublers.
We present a calculation of the magnetic moments for the baryon octet and decuplet using the background-field method and standard Wilson gauge and fermion actions in the quenched approximation of lattice QCD. Progressively smaller static magnetic fields are introduced on a $24^4$ lattice at beta=6.0 and the pion mass is probed down to about 500 MeV. Magnetic moments are extracted from the linear response of the masses to the background field.
We introduce a gauge-invariant measure of the local "abelianicity" of any given lattice configuration in non-abelian lattice gauge theory; it is essentially a comparison of the magnitude of field strength commutators to the magnitude of the field strength itself. This measure, in conjunction with the cooling technique, is used to probe the SU(2) lattice vacuum for a possible large-scale abelian background, underlying the local short-range field fluctuations. We do, in fact, find a substantial rise in abelianicity over 10 cooling steps or so, after which the abelianicity tends to drop again.
We propose a method for the lattice QCD computation of nucleon-nucleon low-energy interactions. It consists in simulating QCD in the background of a ''electromagnetic" field whose potential is non-vanishing, but whose field strength is zero. By tuning the background field, phase-shifts at any (but small) momenta can be determined by measuring the shift of the ground state energy. Lattice sizes as small as 5 Fermi can be sufficient for the calculation of phase shifts up to momenta of order of $m_π/2$.
The magnetic polarisability is a fundamental property of hadrons, which provides insight into their structure in the low-energy regime. The pion magnetic polarisability is calculated using lattice QCD in the presence of background magnetic fields. The results presented are facilitated by the introduction of a new magnetic-field dependent quark-propagator eigenmode projector and the use of the background-field corrected clover fermion action. The magnetic polarisabilities are calculated in a relativistic formalism, and the excellent signal-to-noise property of pion correlation functions facilit…
We report some results for the magnetic moments of vector mesons extracted from mass shifts in the presence of static external magnetic fields. The calculations are done on $24^4$ quenched lattices using standard Wilson actions, with $β$=6.0 and pion mass down to 500 MeV. The results are compared to those from the form factor method.
