The extraction of meson-baryon scattering parameters from lattice QCD is complicated by the necessity, in some channels, of including annihilation diagrams. We consider a strategy to avoid the need for these extremely costly and noisy contributions. The strategy is based on simulations with an isospin chemical potential which, contrary to a baryon chemical potential, has no sign problem. When the isospin chemical potential is larger than a critical value, a charged pion condensate forms. Baryons propagating in the pion condensate will have their masses modified by pion-baryon scattering parameters. Consequently these parameters can be extracted from lattice QCD simulations in an isospin chemical potential, and we detail precisely which low-energy constants using baryon chiral perturbation theory.
We study electromagnetic as well as strong isospin breaking effects in the isospin mass splittings of light pseudoscalar and vector mesons. To this end we employ a coupled system of quark Dyson-Schwinger and meson Bethe-Salpeter equations whose interaction kernels contain gluon, pion and photon exchange interactions. In bound states, QCD-induced isospin breaking is manifest on different levels. On the one hand, a different explicit up- and down-quark mass directly affects the propagators of the constituent quarks. On the other hand, it leads to different interaction kernels within the isospin …
Applying the QCD sum-rule machinery in the so-called local-duality shape to heavy-light mesons reveals that, as a consequence of the non-zero mass gap between up and down quarks, the leptonic decay constants of the neutral and charged versions of the $D,$ $D^\ast,$ $B$ and $B^\ast$ mesons differ by approximately 1 MeV.
We explore, by a rather peculiar limit of QCD sum rules subject to a Borel transformation (realized by allowing the related Borel mass parameter to approach infinity), how the small difference of the masses of up and down quark translates into the leptonic decay constants of pseudoscalar or vector heavy-light mesons. For the charmed and bottom mesons, we find that the decay constants of their lowest-lying charged and neutral representatives should differ by an amount of the order of 1 MeV.
We summarize our lattice QCD determinations of the pion-pion, pion-kaon and kaon-kaon s-wave scattering lengths at maximal isospin with a particular focus on the extrapolation to the physical point and the usage of next-to-leading order chiral perturbation theory to do so. We employ data at three values of the lattice spacing and pion masses ranging from around 230 MeV to around 450 MeV, applying Luescher's finite volume method to compute the scattering lengths. We find that leading order chiral perturbation theory is surprisingly close to our data even in the kaon-kaon case for our entire ran…
We investigate the QCD phase diagram for small values of baryon and strange quark chemical potentials from simulations at non-zero isospin chemical potential. Simulations at pure isospin chemical potential are not hindered by the sign problem and pion condensation can be observed for sufficiently large isospin chemical potentials. We study how the related phase boundary evolves with baryonic and strange chemical potentials via reweighting in quark chemical potentials and discuss our results. Furthermore, we propose and implement an alternative method to approach nonzero baryon (and strange qua…
Evaluation of Borelized QCD sum rules in the so-called local-duality limit of infinitely large Borel mass parameter provides an alternate route for extraction of the dependence of the decay constants of heavy-light mesons on the mass $m_q$ of the involved light quark $q$: For appropriate choices of the two-point correlation functions of currents interpolating the hadrons under study, the local-duality limit forces all nonperturbative contributions parametrized by vacuum condensates to such kind of correlator to vanish. As a consequence, the sought $m_q$ dependence of the heavy-light meson deca…
We present the status of an ongoing project aimed at the inclusion of isospin-breaking corrections arising from the non-degeneracy of the light quark masses and electromagnetic interactions in calculations of the low-lying octet and decuplet baryon masses. Our ultimate goal is to perform a precision determination of the lattice scale including isospin-breaking effects. We apply the perturbative formalism to isospin-symmetric $N_f=2+1$ CLS ensembles. We show results on baryon masses up to leading order in isospin-breaking corrections on two ensembles with $m_π\approx290\,\text{MeV}$ and $m_π\ap…
We study the isospin mass differences of singly heavy baryons, based on a pion mean-field approach. We consider both the electromagnetic interactions and the hadronic contributions that arise from the mass difference of the up and down quarks. The relevant parameters have been already fixed by the baryon octet. In addition, we introduce the strong hyperfine interactions between the light quarks inside a chiral soliton and the Coulomb interactions between the chiral soliton and a heavy quark. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental data. In particular, the results for …
We present work designed to compute baryon masses on $N_f = 2 + 1$ CLS ensembles including isospin-breaking effects due to non-degenerate light quark masses and electromagnetic interactions. These effects are determined at leading order via a perturbative expansion around the iso-symmetric theory. We furthermore apply a group-theoretical operator construction for the various interpolators describing the different members of the baryon octet and decuplet based on a classification by spin, parity, and flavor content.
The Hamiltonian formulation of Lattice QCD with staggered fermions in the strong coupling limit has no sign problem at non-zero baryon density and allows for Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We have extended this formalism to two flavors, and after a resummation, there is no sign problem both for non-zero baryon and isospin chemical potential. We report on recent progress on the implementation of the Quantum Monte Carlo simulations.
We study the scattering of light pseudoscalar mesons ($π$, $K$) off charmed mesons ($D$, $D_s$) in full lattice QCD. The S-wave scattering lengths are calculated using Lüscher's finite volume technique. We use a relativistic formulation for the charm quark. For the light quark, we use domain-wall fermions in the valence sector and improved Kogut-Susskind sea quarks. We calculate the scattering lengths of isospin-3/2 $Dπ$, $D_sπ$, $D_sK$, isospin-0 $D\bar{K}$ and isospin-1 $D\bar{K}$ channels on the lattice. For the chiral extrapolation, we use a chiral unitary approach to next-to-leading order…
We report a new analysis of the isospin splittings within the decuplet baryon spectrum. Our numerical results are based upon five ensembles of dynamical QCD+QED lattices. The analysis is carried out within a flavour-breaking expansion which encodes the effects of breaking the quark masses and electromagnetic charges away from an approximate SU(3) symmetric point. The results display total isospin splittings within the approximate SU(2) multiplets that are compatible with phenomenological estimates. Further, new insight is gained into these splittings by separating the contributions arising fro…
Many mesons with properties incompatible with a $\bar cc$ structure have already been discovered, e.g. the $Z_c$ mesons with isospin 1. We investigate the spectrum of exotic charmonium-like mesons using lattice QCD. The focus is on $\bar cc \bar qq$ states with $J^{PC}=1^{+\pm}$ and isospin 1. This is the first study of four-quark states with these quantum numbers, a non-zero total momentum and two different lattice volumes. We extract the energy levels and determine the scattering length for $D\bar D^*$ scattering close to the threshold using Lüscher's formalism. Our preliminary results show …
We present an exploratory study of leading isospin breaking effects in mesonic masses using $O(a)$ improved Wilson fermions with open boundaries. Isospin symmetry is explicitly broken by distinct masses and electric charges of the up and down quarks. In order to be able to make use of existing isosymmetric QCD gauge ensembles we apply reweighting techniques. The path integral describing QCD+QED is expanded perturbatively in powers of deviations in the quark masses and the inverse strong coupling as well as the electromagnetic coupling. We have constructed QED$_{\mathrm{L}}$, which we use as a …
Imaginary chemical potentials serve as a useful tool to constrain the QCD phase diagram and to gain insight into the thermodynamics of strongly interacting matter. In this study, we report on the first determination of the phase diagram for arbitrary imaginary baryon and isospin chemical potentials at high temperature using one-loop perturbation theory, revealing a nontrivial structure of Roberge-Weiss (RW) phase transitions in this plane. Subsequently, this system is simulated numerically with $N_{\rm f}=2$ unimproved staggered quarks on $N_τ=4$ lattices at a range of temperatures at one of t…
