We investigate the mass differences of charm and bottom heavy baryons, using MILC lattice gauge configurations with 2+1 dynamical sea quark flavors. We extend our previous work to three lattice spacings: fine (a~0.09), coarse (a~0.12), and medium-coarse (a~0.15) ensembles. For extrapolations and interpolations, we apply simultaneous quadratic fits and simple linear fits with the full QCD data points for the valence quark masses as well as the sea quark masses.
We investigate baryon-baryon (BB) interactions in the flavor SU(3) symmetric world, by using the 3-flavor full QCD simulations. In the SU(3) limit, six independent two-baryon states exist for a given orbital angular momentum. We forcus on S-wave states and extract BB potentials using the method recently developed. We discuss the flavor dependence of the potentials, in particular, the strength of the repulsion at short distance. We find that the SU(3) flavor structure of the repulsive core is compatible with that expected from the Pauli principle for the quarks.
Motivated by simulation results for octet and decuplet baryon masses using 2+1 flavors of light staggered quarks, we are incorporating staggered lattice artifacts into heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory, calculating the masses of various staggered baryons, and studying the connection between the staggered baryons of the chiral theory and the staggered baryons of simulations. We present order (m_q)^(3/2) loop contributions to the masses of several staggered nucleons and discuss interpolating fields that create these states.
The construction of the first baryon operators for staggered lattice QCD exploited the taste symmetry to emulate physical quark flavor; contemporary 2+1 flavor simulations explicitly include three physical quark flavors and necessitate interpreting a valence sector with twelve quarks. After discussing expected features of the resulting baryon spectrum, I consider the spectra of operators transforming irreducibly under SU(3)xGTS, the direct product of flavor SU(3) and the geometrical time-slice group of the 1-flavor staggered theory. I then describe the construction of a set of maximally local …
Based on CLS simulations with 2+1 flavors and open boundaries we present first results of the baryon spectrum. We report on the status of our effort related to these simulations and the chiral extrapolation to the physical point.
We study negative-parity baryon spectra in quenched anisotropic lattice QCD. The negative-parity baryons are measured as the parity partner of the ground-state baryons. In addition to the flavor octet and decuplet baryons, we pay much attention to the flavor-singlet negative-parity baryon as a three-quark state and compare it with the Lambda(1405) baryon. Numerical results of the flavor octet and decuplet negative-parity baryon masses are close to experimental values of lowest-lying negative-parity baryons, while the flavor-singlet baryon is much heavier than Lambda(1405). This indicates that …
Lattice Monte Carlo calculations of baryon spectroscopy in gauge groups SU(N), N=3, 5, 7, are presented. The quenched valence fermions come in three flavors, two degenerate mass ones and a third heavier flavor. The data shows striking regularities reminiscent of the real-world case of N=3: higher angular momentum states lie higher in mass, and Sigma-like states lie higher than Lambda-like ones. These simple regularities are reasonably well described by 1/N expansions.
We study the heavy baryon mass spectrum on gauge configurations that include 2+1 flavors of dynamical improved staggered quarks. A valence clover heavy quark is combined with two improved staggered light quark propagators to form baryons with different flavors. We are using MILC coarse gauge configurations with a lattice spacing of about 0.12 fm. In this preliminary investigation, we explore the chiral limit by studying two light sea quark masses, three different strange valence quark masses, and nine different light valence quark masses ranging from 0.1 to 0.4 times the nominal strange quark …
We report a study of the scattering of two octet baryons using lattice QCD. The baryon-baryon spectrum is computed using distillation on eight lattice ensembles spanning six lattice spacings and multiple volumes, all at the SU(3) flavor symmetric point with $m_π=m_K\approx 420$ MeV. Using finite-volume quantization conditions, we determine the scattering phase shift and the presence of bound states. Focusing on the $H$ dibaryon, our results show large discretization effects: in the continuum, the binding energy is $B_H=4.56\pm1.13\pm0.63$ MeV, whereas on our coarsest lattice spacing this is la…
We evaluate the pseudoscalar-meson octet-baryon coupling constants and the corresponding axial charges in eight channels ($πN\N$, $πΣΣ$, $πΛΣ$, $KΛN$, $K ΣN $, $πΞΞ$, $KΛΞ$ and $KΣΞ$) in lattice QCD with two flavors of dynamical quarks. The parameter $α\equiv F/(F+D)$ representing the SU(3)-flavor symmetry is computed at each u,d-quark hopping parameter and at the flavor-SU(3) symmetric point where the three quark flavors are degenerate at the physical $s$-quark mass. In particular, we obtain $α=0.395(6)$ at the SU(3) symmetric limit. The quark-mass dependences of the coupling constants are ob…
We investigate the charmed baryon mass spectrum using the relativistic heavy quark action on 2+1 flavor PACS-CS configurations previously generated on $32^3 \times 64$ lattice. The dynamical up-down and strange quark masses are set to the physical values by using the technique of reweighting to shift the quark hopping parameters from the values employed in the configuration generation. At the physical point, the lattice spacing equals $a^{-1}=2.194(10)$ GeV and the spatial extent $L=2.88(1)$ fm. Our results for the charmed baryon masses are consistent with experiments except for $Ξ_{cc}$, whic…
We study the nucleon, Sigma and cascade octet baryon electromagnetic form factors and the effects of SU(3) flavor symmetry breaking from 2+1-flavor lattice calculations. We find that electric and magnetic radii are similar; the maximum discrepancy is about 10%. In the pion-mass region we explore, both the quark-component and full-baryon moments have small SU(3) symmetry breaking. We extrapolate the charge radii and the magnetic moments using three-flavor heavy-baryon chiral perturbation theory (HBXPT). The systematic errors due to chiral and continuum extrapolations remain significant, giving …
We investigate the quark mass dependence of baryon masses in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD using SU(3) heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory up to one-loop order. The baryon mass data used for the analyses are obtained for the degenerate up-down quark mass of 3 MeV to 24 MeV and two choices of the strange quark mass around the physical value. We find that the SU(3) chiral expansion fails to describe both the octet and the decuplet baryon data if phenomenological values are employed for the meson-baryon couplings. The SU(2) case is also examined for the nucleon. We observe that higher order terms ar…
Low-lying $Λ$ baryons with spin 1/2 are analyzed in full (unquenched) lattice QCD. We construct $2 \times 2$ cross correlators from flavor SU(3) "octet" and "singlet" baryon operators, and diagonalize them so as to extract information of two low-lying states for each parity. The two-flavor CP-PACS gauge configurations are used, which are generated in the renormalization-group improved gauge action and the ${\mathcal O}(a)$-improved quark action. Three different $β$'s, $β= 1.80$, 1.95 and 2.10, are employed, whose corresponding lattice spacings are $a = 0.2150$, 0.1555 and 0.1076 fm. For each c…
We investigate the charmed baryon mass spectrum using the relativistic heavy quark action on 2+1 flavor PACS-CS configurations previously generated on $32^3 \times 64$ lattice. The dynamical up-down and strange quark masses are tuned to their physical values, reweighted from those employed in the configuration generation. At the physical point, the inverse lattice spacing determined from the $Ω$ baryon mass gives $a^{-1}=2.194(10)$ GeV, and thus the spatial extent becomes $L = 32 a = 2.88(1)$ fm. Our results for the charmed baryon masses are consistent with experimental values, except for the …
In staggered QCD, many staggered baryons correspond to each physical state. Taste violations lift the continuum degeneracies of the baryons and introduce nonzero off-diagonal elements in the mass matrix. While presenting no problem of principle, these splittings and mixings complicate analyses of simulation results. However, in special cases operators with good SU(3) quantum numbers can be used to circumvent the splittings and mixings. I review what has been learned from staggered chiral perturbation theory, outline a program of attack for the amenable cases, and summarize the present status o…
We review a method for numerical simulations of lattice gauge theories at non-zero baryonic chemical potential we recently proposed. We first report on a test of the method using a solvable model and then present results for the phase structure of four flavour QCD. For the first time the region of chemical potential up to 1.4 T_C is explored, finding a first order transition line.
We present a calculation of generalized baryon form factors in the framework of three-flavor covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory at leading one-loop order. This is needed for lattice calculations of the first moments of generalized parton distribution functions. The formulae we derive can be used to guide the chiral extrapolation of such lattice results.
We investigate the finite size effect on the vector meson and the baryon sectors using a subset of the "PACS10" configurations which are generated, keeping the space-time volumes over (10 fm$)^4$ in 2+1 flavor QCD at the physical point. Comparing the results on (5.5 fm$)^4$ and (10.9 fm$)^4$ lattices the ground states of octet baryons , which are stable on the lattice, show no finite size effect within less than 0.5% level of statistical errors. For those of vector mesons, which are unstable on the lattice, we observe that the effective masses are well below the experimental resonance levels b…
We present preliminary results of the calculation of the positive-parity ground state charm baryon spectrum using of N_f=2+1+1$ dynamical quarks. The calculation uses a relativistic heavy-quark action for the valence charm quark, clover-Wilson fermions for the valence light quarks and HISQ sea quarks. The spectrum is calculated with a lightest pion mass around 220 MeV and two lattice spacings ($a\sim0.12$ fm and 0.09 fm) are used to extrapolate to continuum limit. Our preliminary results are consistent with the currently measured baryon spectrum, except for the isospin-averaged $J=1/2$ $Ξ_{cc}…
We study the distribution of color electric flux of the three-quark system in quenched and full QCD (with N_f = 2 flavors of dynamical quarks) at zero and finite temperature. To reduce ultra-violet fluctuations, the calculations are done in the abelian projected theory fixed to the maximally abelian gauge. In the confined phase we find clear evidence for a Y--shape flux tube surrounded and formed by the solenoidal monopole current, in accordance with the dual superconductor picture of confinement. In the deconfined, high temperature phase monopoles cease to condense, and the distribution of th…
We investigate baryon-baryon (BB) interactions in the 3-flavor full QCD simulations with degenerate quark masses for all flavors. The BB potentials in the orbital S-wave are extracted from the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter wave functions measured on the lattice. We observe strong flavor-spin dependences of the BB potentials at short distances. In particular, a strong repulsive core exists in the flavor-octet and spin-singlet channel(the 8_s representation), while an attractive core appears in the flavor singlet channel (the 1 representation). We discuss the relation of such flavor-spin dependence with …
We present results for the phase diagram of three flavor QCD for μ_B ~ 500 MeV. Our simulations are performed with imaginary chemical potential μ_I for which the fermion determinant is positive. Physical observables are then fitted by truncated Taylor series and continued to real chemical potential. We map out the location of the critical line T_c(μ_B) with an accuracy up to terms of order (μ_B/T)^6. We also give first results on a determination of the critical endpoint of the transition and its quark mass dependence. Our results for the endpoint differ significantly from those obtained by oth…
We investigate baryon-baryon (BB) interactions in the 3-flavor full QCD simulations with degenerate quark masses for all flavors. The BB potentials in the orbital S-wave are extracted from the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter wave functions measured on the lattice. We observe strong flavor-spin dependences of the BB potentials at short distances. In particular, a strong repulsive core exists in the flavor-octet and spin-singlet channel (the 8_s representation), while an attractive core appears in the flavor singlet channel (the 1 representation). We discuss a relation of such flavor-spin dependence with t…
We have analyzed the chiral expansion of the baryon masses to second order in the quark masses, including strong isospin violation. The calculations are performed in Lorentz-invariant baryon chiral perturbation theory. Chiral extrapolation functions for three-flavor unquenched lattice simulations are derived. The matching to the two-flavor case and the sigma terms are also considered.
Short-range parts of the baryon-baryon ($BB$) interactions are analyzed from the spin-flavor $SU(6)_{sf}\supset SU(3)_f \times SU(2)_s$ symmetry viewpoint. Due to the Pauli principle of quarks, the symmetry structure of the wave functions is restricted at short distances. Consequently, the $BB$ states with the same spin-flavor quantum numbers may be reduced into one or a few spin-flavor states. Such reduction causes repulsion and/or suppression of transitions at short distances. We show that the observed suppression of the $ΞN \to ΛΛ$ conversion can be explained following the above argument. I…
We evaluate the strangeness-conserving $N N$, $ΣΣ$, $ΞΞ$, $ΛΣ$ and the strangeness-changing $ΛN$, $ΣN$, $ΛΞ$, $ΣΞ$ axial charges in lattice QCD with two flavors of dynamical quarks and extend our previous work on pseudoscalar-meson-octet-baryon coupling constants so as to include $πΞΞ$, $KΛΞ$ and $KΣΞ$ coupling constants. We find that the axial charges have rather weak quark-mass dependence and the breaking in SU(3)-flavor symmetry is small at each quark-mass point we consider.
Excited state spectra are calculated using lattice QCD for baryons that can be formed from $u$, $d$ and $s$ quarks, namely the $N$, $Δ$, $Λ$, $Σ$, $Ξ$ and $Ω$ families of baryons. Baryonic operators are constructed from continuum operators that transform as irreducible representations of SU(3)$_F$ symmetry for flavor, SU(4) symmetry for Dirac spins of quarks and O(3) symmetry for orbital angular momenta. Covariant derivatives are used to realize orbital angular momenta. Using the operators, we calculate matrices of correlation functions in order to extract excited states. The resulting lattice…
We introduce the strange quark mass to the Sakai-Sugimoto model of holographic QCD. We compute mass shifts in the spectra of three-flavor baryons at the leading order in perturbation in quark masses. Comparison with experimental data shows an agreement only qualitatively.
We analyze meson-baryon scattering lengths in the framework of covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory at leading one-loop order. We compute the complete set of matching relations between the dimension-two low-energy constants in the two- and three-flavor formulations of the theory. We derive new two-flavor low-energy theorems for pion-hyperon and pion-cascade scattering that can be tested in lattice simulations.
The axial-vector form factors and axial-vector constants of the baryon decuplet are investigated within a pion mean-field approach, which is also known as the chiral quark-soliton model. Given an axial-vector current with a specified flavor, there are four different form factors of a decuplet baryon. When we consider the singlet, triplet, and octet axial-vector currents, we have twelve different form factors for each member of the baryon decuplet. We compute all these axial-vector form factors of the baryon decuplet, taking into account the rotational $1/N_c$ corrections and effects of flavor …
We study the isospin symmetry breaking and mass splittings of the eight lowest-lying baryons. We consider three kinds of baryon mass terms, including the bare mass term, the electromagnetic terms and the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking terms. We include the mixing term between flavor-octet and flavor-decuplet baryons. This assumes that the lowest-lying Sigma and Xi baryons contain a few decuplet components and so are not purely flavor-octet. We achieve a good fitting that the difference between every fitted mass and its experimental value is less than 0.2 MeV.
We evaluate the $πN!N$, $πΣΣ$, $πΛΣ$, $KΛN$ and $K ΣN $ coupling constants and the corresponding monopole masses in lattice QCD with two flavors of dynamical quarks. The parameters representing the SU(3)-flavor symmetry are computed at the point where the three quark flavors are degenerate at the physical $s$-quark mass. In particular, we obtain $α\equiv F/(F+D)=0.395(6)$. The quark-mass dependences of the coupling constants are obtained by changing the $u$- and the $d$-quark masses. We find that the SU(3)-flavor parameters have weak quark-mass dependence and thus the SU(3)-flavor symmetry is …
We present a lattice study of net-baryon number fluctuations in (2+1)-flavor QCD. The results are based on a Taylor expansion of the pressure with respect to the baryon chemical potential. We calculate higher moments of the net-baryon number fluctuations and compare with the corresponding resonance gas results. We find that for temperature below 0.9T_c the fluctuations seem to agree with the hadron resonance gas predictions. Close to T_c, higher moments are increasingly more sensitive to the critical behavior of the QCD phase transition. Furthermore, we estimate the radius of convergence of th…
We proposed a unified framework to describe the interactions of the observed $T_{cc}$, $P_c$, and $P_{cs}$ within a quark level interaction in our previous work. In this work, we generalize our framework to the loosely bound hadronic molecules composed of heavy flavor di-hadrons with strangeness. We predict the possible $D^{(*)}D^{(*)}_s$ molecular states in the SU(3) limit with the masses of the $P_c$ states as the inputs. We also investigate the baryon-meson and baryon-baryon systems and consider the SU(3) breaking effect in their flavor wave functions. We generalize our isospin criterion of…
In the search for a composite Higgs boson in walking technicolor models, many flavor QCD, in particular with $N_f=8$, is an attractive candidate, and has been found to have a composite flavor-singlet scalar as light as the pion. Based on lattice simulations of this theory with the HISQ action, we will present our preliminary results on the scalar decay constant using the fermionic bilinear operator, and on the mass of the lightest baryon state which could be a dark matter candidate. Combining these two results, implications for dark matter direct detection are also discussed.
The excited baryon masses are analyzed in the framework of the $1/N_c$ expansion using the available physical masses and also the masses obtained in lattice QCD for different quark masses. The baryon states are organized into irreducible representations of $SU(6)\times O(3)$, where the $[{\bf{56}},\ell^P=0^+]$ ground state and excited baryons, and the $[{\bf{56}},2^+]$ and $[{\bf{70}},1^-]$ excited states are analyzed. The analyses are carried out to order 1/Nc and first order in the quark masses. The issue of state identifications is discussed. Numerous parameter independent mass relations re…
The short distance behavior of baryon-baryon potentials defined through Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter wave functions is investigated using the operator product expansion. In a previous analysis of the nucleon-nucleon case, corresponding to the SU(3) channels $27_s$ and $\overline{10}_a$, we argued that the potentials have a repulsive core. A new feature occurs for the case of baryons made up of three flavors: manifestly asymptotically attractive potentials appear in the singlet and octet channels. Attraction in the singlet channel was first indicated by quark model considerations, and recently been fou…
The color-flavor transformation, an identity that connects two integrals, each of which is over one of a dual pair of Lie groups acting in the fermionic Fock space, is extended to the case of the special unitary group. Using this extension, a toy model of lattice QCD is studied: N_f species of spinless fermions interacting with strongly coupled SU(N_c) lattice gauge fields in 1+1 dimensions. The color-flavor transformed theory is expressed in terms of gauge singlets, the meson fields, organized into sectors distinguished by the distribution of baryonic flux. A comprehensive analytical and nume…
We analyze the phase diagram of QCD with four staggered flavors in the (mu, T) plane using a method recently proposed by us. We explore the region T > 0.7 Tc and mu <1.4 Tc, where Tc is the transition temperature at zero baryon density, and find a first order transition line. Our results are quantitatively compatible with those obtained with the imaginary chemical potential approach and the double reweighting method, in the region where these approaches are reliable, T > 0.9 Tc and mu < Tc. But, in addition, our method allows us to extend the transition line to lower temperatures and higher ch…
We investigate the axial-vector transition form factors of the baryon octet to the baryon decuplet within the framework of the chiral quark-soliton model, with the effects of flavor SU(3) symmetry breaking included. We consider the rotational $1/N_c$ corrections and regard the strange current quark mass as a perturbation. We compare the present results for the $Δ\to N$ axial-vector transition with those from other models and lattice QCD. We also compute all possible axial-vector transitions from the baryon decuplet to the octet with the strangeness changed, i.e., $|ΔS|=1$. We obtain the value …
We present an analysis of the baryon-octet and -decuplet masses using covariant SU(3)-flavor chiral perturbation theory up to next-to-leading order. Besides the description of the physical masses we address the problem of the lattice QCD extrapolation. Using the PACS-CS collaboration data we show that a good description of the lattice points can be achieved at next-to-leading order with the covariant loop amplitudes and phenomenologically determined values for the meson-baryon couplings. Moreover, the extrapolation to the physical point up to this order is found to be better than the linear on…
At the LHC, bottom baryons are being produced in unprecedented quantities, which opens up a new field for flavor physics. For example, the decay $Λ_b \to p μ^- \barν$ can be used to obtain a novel determination of the CKM matrix element $|V_{ub}|$, and the decay $Λ_b \to Λμ^+ μ^-$ probes the weak interactions at the loop level. The first lattice calculations of the relevant $Λ_b \to p$ and $Λ_b \to Λ$ form factors have recently been performed using domain-wall light quarks and static $b$ quarks. To further reduce the theoretical uncertainty, one has to go beyond the static approximation. Here …
Baryon-baryon potentials are obtained from 3-flavor QCD simulations with the lattice volume L ~ 4 fm, the lattice spacing a ~ 0.12 fm, and the pseudo-scalar-meson mass M_ps =469 - 1171 MeV. The NN scattering phase shift and the mass of H-dibaryon in the flavor SU(3) limit are extracted from the resultant potentials by solving the Schrodinger equation. The NN phase shift in the SU(3) limit is shown to have qualitatively similar behavior as the experimental data. A bound H-dibaryon in the SU(3) limit is found to exist in the flavor-singlet J^P=0^+ channel with the binding energy of about 26 MeV …
We investigate the negative-parity baryon spectra in quenched lattice QCD. We employ the anisotropic lattice with standard Wilson gauge and O(a) improved Wilson quark actions at three values of lattice spacings with renormalized anisotropy xi=a_sigma/a_tau=4, where a_sigma and a_tau are spatial and temporal lattice spacings, respectively. The negative-parity baryons are measured with the parity projection. In particular, we pay much attention to the lowest SU(3) flavor-singlet negative-parity baryon, which is assigned as the Lambda(1405) in the quark model. For the flavor octet and decuplet ne…
Lattice QCD simulations are now reaching a precision where isospin breaking effects become important. Previously, we have developed a program to systematically investigate the pattern of flavor symmetry beaking within QCD and successfully applied it to meson and baryon masses involving up, down and strange quarks. In this Letter we extend the calculations to QCD + QED and present our first results on isospin splittings in the pseudoscalar meson and baryon octets. In particular, we obtain the nucleon mass difference of $M_n-M_p=1.35(18)(8)\,\mbox{MeV}$ and the electromagnetic contribution to th…
We study $Λ$ baryons of spin-parity $\frac{1}{2}^{\pm}$ with either a strange or charm valence quark in full 2+1 flavor lattice QCD. Multiple $SU(3)$ singlet and octet operators are employed to generate the desired single baryon states on the lattice. Via the variational method, the couplings of these states to the different operators provide information about the flavor structure of the $Λ$ baryons. We make use of the gauge configurations of the PACS-CS Collaboration and chirally extrapolate the results for the masses and $SU(3)$ flavor components to the physical point. We furthermore gradual…
We use the method of QCD sum rules to study the $D$-wave charmed and bottom baryons of the $SU(3)$ flavor $\mathbf{6}_F$, and calculate their masses up to the order $\mathcal{O}(1/m_Q)$ with $m_Q$ the heavy quark mass. Our results suggest that the $Ξ_c(3123)$ can be well interpreted as a $D$-wave $Ξ_c^\prime(\mathbf{6}_F)$ state, and it probably has a partner state close to it. Our results also suggest that there may exist as many as four $D$-wave $Ω_c$ states in the energy region $3.3\sim3.5$ GeV, and we propose to search for them in the further LHCb and BelleII experiments.
Lattice quantum chromodynamics is used to constrain the interactions of two octet baryons at the SU(3) flavor-symmetric point, with quark masses that are heavier than those in nature (equal to that of the physical strange quark mass and corresponding to a pion mass of $\approx 806~\tt{MeV}$). Specifically, the S-wave scattering phase shifts of two-baryon systems at low energies are obtained with the application of Lüscher's formalism, mapping the energy eigenvalues of two interacting baryons in a finite volume to the two-particle scattering amplitudes below the relevant inelastic thresholds. T…
The interaction energies between two baryons at short distance in different flavor channels are calculated from the constituent quark model (CQM) and are compared with the recent lattice QCD (LQCD) results for baryon-baryon potentials at short distance. We consider the six-quark system with two strange quarks and focus on the quantum numbers, (Flavor,Spin)=(1,0),(8,1),(10,1),($\overline{10}$,1) and (27,0). The interaction energy is defined by subtracting out isolated baryon masses and relative kinetic energy of two baryons from the total energy of a compact six-quark state. We introduce intera…
In a recent work we studied the phase structure of the Gross-Neveu (GN) model in $1+1$ dimensions at finite number of fermion flavors $N_\mathrm{f} = 2, 8, 16$, finite temperature and finite chemical potential using lattice field theory. Most importantly, we found an inhomogeneous phase at low temperature and large chemical potential, quite similar to the analytically solvable $N_\mathrm{f} \rightarrow \infty$ limit. In the present work we continue our lattice field theory investigation of the finite-$N_\mathrm{f}$ GN model by studying the formation of baryons, their spatial distribution and t…
The masses of the low-lying strange and charm baryons are evaluated using two degenerate flavors of twisted mass sea quarks for pion masses in the range of about 260 MeV to 450 MeV. The strange and charm valence quark masses are tuned to reproduce the mass of the kaon and D-meson at the physical point. The tree-level Symanzik improved gauge action is employed. We use three values of the lattice spacing, corresponding to $β=3.9$, $β=4.05$ and $β=4.2$ with $r_0/a=5.22(2)$, $r_0/a=6.61(3)$ and $r_0/a=8.31(5)$ respectively. %spacings $a=0.0855(5)$ and $a=0.0667(3)$ determined from the pion decay c…
We consider the most general fractional background fluxes in the color, flavor, and baryon number directions, compatible with the faithful action of the global symmetry of a given theory. We call the obstruction to gauging symmetries revealed by such backgrounds the baryon-color-flavor (BCF) 't Hooft anomaly. We apply the BCF anomaly to vector-like theories, with fermions in higher-dimensional representations of arbitrary N-ality, and derive non-trivial constraints on their IR dynamics. In particular, this class of theories enjoys an independent discrete chiral symmetry and one may ask about t…
We investigate the phase structure of QCD with 3 degenerate quark flavors as function of the degenerate quark masses at vanishing baryon number density. We use the Highly Improved Staggered Quarks on lattices with temporal extent $N_{t}=6$ and perform calculations for six values of quark masses, which in the continuum limit correspond to pion masses in the range $80~{\rm MeV} \lesssim m_π \lesssim 230~$MeV. By analyzing the volume and temperature dependence of the chiral condensate and chiral susceptibility we find no direct evidence for a first order phase transition in this range of pion mas…
Lattice QCD calculations with background magnetic fields are used to determine the magnetic moments of the octet baryons. Computations are performed at the physical value of the strange quark mass, and two values of the light quark mass, one corresponding to the three-flavor symmetric point, where the pion mass is 800 MeV, and the other corresponding to a pion mass of 450 MeV. The moments are found to exhibit only mild pion-mass dependence when expressed in terms of appropriately chosen magneton units- the natural baryon magneton. A curious pattern is revealed among the anomalous baryon magnet…
