Electromagnetic properties of the nucleon are explored with lattice QCD using a novel technique. Focusing on background electric fields, we show how the electric polarizability can be extracted from nucleon correlation functions. A crucial step concerns addressing contributions from the magnetic moment, which affects the relativistic propagation of nucleons in electric fields. By properly handing these contributions, we can determine both magnetic moments and electric polarizabilities. Lattice results from anisotropic clover lattices are presented. Our method is not limited to the neutron; we show results for the proton as well.
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…
I give a summary of recent results on nucleon polarizabilities, with emphasis on chiral perturbation theory. The predictive calculations of Compton scattering off the nucleon are compared to recent empirical determinations and lattice QCD calculations of the polarizabilities, thereby testing chiral perturbation theory in the single-baryon sector.
We review recent developments in the theoretical investigation of the nucleon polarizabilities. We first report on the static polarizabilities as measured in real Compton scattering, comparing and interpreting the results from various theoretical approaches. In a second step, we extend the discussion to the generalized polarizabilities which can be accessed in virtual Compton scattering, showing how the information encoded in these quantities can provide a spatial interpretation of the induced polarization densities in the nucleon.
The difference between the electromagnetic self-energies of proton and neutron can be calculated with the Cottingham formula, which expresses the self-energies as an integral over the electroproduction cross sections---provided the nucleon matrix elements of the current commutator do not contain a fixed pole. We show that, under the same proviso, the subtraction function occurring in the dispersive representation of the virtual Compton forward scattering amplitude is determined by the cross sections. The representation in particular leads to a parameter-free sum rule for the nucleon polarizabi…
Charged and neutral, pion and kaon electric polarizabilities are extracted from lattice QCD using an ensemble of anisotropic gauge configurations with dynamical clover fermions. We utilize classical background fields to access the polarizabilities from two-point correlation functions. Uniform background fields are achieved by quantizing the electric field strength with the proper treatment of boundary flux. These external fields, however, are implemented only in the valence quark sector. A novel method to extract charge particle polarizabilities is successfully demonstrated for the first time.
The response of hadrons to electromagnetic probes is highly constrained by chiral dynamics; but, in some cases, predictions have not compared well with experimental data. The lattice can be used to test the chiral electromagnetism of hadrons and ultimately confront experiment. We use background field techniques to study the electromagnetic polarizabilities of hadrons. Focusing on simulations in background electric fields, we present preliminary results for both charged and neutral particle polarizabilities. The former are extracted using a novel method.
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…
We examine the polarized doubly-virtual Compton scattering (VVCS) off the nucleon using chiral perturbation theory ($χ$PT). The polarized VVCS contains a wealth of information on the spin structure of the nucleon which is relevant to the calculation of the two-photon-exchange effects in atomic spectroscopy and electron scattering. We report on a complete next-to-leading-order (NLO) calculation of the polarized VVCS amplitudes $S_1(ν, Q^2)$ and $S_2(ν, Q^2)$, and the corresponding polarized spin structure functions $g_1(x, Q^2)$ and $g_2(x,Q^2)$. Our results for the moments of polarized structu…
Chiral dynamics makes definitive predictions for the electromagnetic polarizabilities of hadrons near the chiral limit; but, agreement with experiment is tenuous in some cases. We provide an overview of lattice QCD methods to compute the electric and magnetic polarizabilities of hadrons. Central to these methods is the lattice simulation of quarks in uniform, classical electromagnetic fields. A long-term goal is the determination of polarizabilities directly from lattice computations, however, in the near term, one may need to rely on partially quenched chiral perturbation theory. Nonetheless …
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.
As part of our ongoing lattice study of the electric polarizabilities of hadrons using the background field approach, we use reweighting to examine the effect of the field on the sea quarks. As with other reweighting studies, the chief difficulty lies in the construction of a stochastic estimate of the ratio of the fermion determinants. In contrast to the case of reweighting in the quark mass, these estimators converge extremely slowly, and are resistant to common variance-reduction techniques such as low-mode subtraction. However, it is possible to construct an alternate estimator, taking adv…
We present the results of a reweighting calculation to compute the contribution of the charged quark sea to the neutron electric polarizability. The chief difficulty is the stochastic estimation of weight factors, and we present a hopping parameter expansion-based technique for reducing the stochastic noise, along with a discussion of why this particular reweighting is so difficult. We used this technique to estimate weight factors for 300 configurations of nHYP-clover fermions and compute the neutron polarizability, but the reweighting greatly inflates the overall statistical error, driven by…
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…
Precision Sum Rule for Nucleon Isovector Polarizabilities and the Proton-Neutron Mass Difference
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所）；School for Theoretical Physics, School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University（湖南大学物理与电子学院理论物理学院）；Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of High-Energy Scale Physics and Applications, Hunan University（湖南大学高能标物理与应用湖南省重点实验室）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；Southern Center for Nuclear-Science Theory (SCNT), Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院近代物理研究所南方核科学理论中心）
The forward doubly-virtual Compton scattering (VVCS) off the nucleon contains a wealth of information on nucleon structure, relevant to the calculation of the two-photon-exchange effects in atomic spectroscopy and electron scattering. We report on a complete next-to-leading-order (NLO) calculation of low-energy VVCS in chiral perturbation theory ($χ$PT). Here we focus on the unpolarized VVCS amplitudes $T_1(ν, Q^2)$ and $T_2(ν, Q^2)$, and the corresponding structure functions $F_1(x, Q^2)$ and $F_2(x,Q^2)$. Our results are confronted, where possible, with "data-driven" dispersive evaluations o…
