Disconnected diagrams give crucial contributions to the physics of flavor singlet hadrons and to scalar form factors of non-singlet hadrons. Naive lattice calculation of the disconnected diagrams, however, requires a huge number of fermion matrix inversions and hence a prohibitively large computational cost. In this article, we present recent studies of the flavor-singelt meson spectrum and nucleon strange quark content using the all-to-all propagator to calculate the relevant disconnected diagrams.
We present results on the disconnected contributions to three point functions entering in studies of hadron structure. We use $N_F = 2+1+1$ twisted mass fermions and give a detailed description on the results of the nucleon σ-terms, isoscalar axial charge and first moments of bare parton distributions for a range of pions masses. In addition we give the σ-terms and the computations are performed using QUDA code implemented on GPUs.
We study the possible significance of four-quark states in the iso-singlet scalar mesons ($J^{PC}=0^{++}$, $I=0$) by performing two-flavor full lattice QCD simulations on an $8^3 \times 16$ lattice using the improved gauge action and the clover-improved Wilson quark action. In particular, we evaluate the propagators of molecular and tetra-quark operators together with singly disconnected diagrams. In the computation of the singly disconnected diagrams we employ the $Z_2$-noise method with the truncated eigenmode approach. We show that the quark loops given by the disconnected diagrams play an …
We present a new method for reducing the stochastic noise of all-to-all propagators based on stopping the inversion of the propagator before convergence. The method is easy to implement, unbiased and independent of the quark action. Applying this method to the calculation of disconnected loops needed for hadronic structure observables we find savings in computer time of factors of 4-12 depending on the operator inserted in the loop. When combined with a hopping parameter expansion technique we obtain combined gains of up to factors of 30 for some operators.
By introducing an external spin operator to the fermion action, the quark spin fractions of hadrons are determined from the linear response of the hadron energies using the Feynman-Hellmann (FH) theorem. At our SU(3)-flavour symmetric point, we find that the connected quark spin fractions are universally in the range 55-70\% for vector mesons and octet and decuplet baryons. There is an indication that the amount of spin suppression is quite sensitive to the strength of SU(3) breaking. We also present first preliminary results applying the FH technique to calculations of quark-line disconnected…
We compute the disconnected quark loops contributions entering the determination of nucleon observables, by using a $N_f = 2$ ensemble of twisted mass fermions with a clover term at a pion mass $m_π= 133$ MeV. We employ exact deflation and implement all calculations in GPUs, enabling us to achieve large statistics and a good signal.
We report our recent lattice calculation of hadronic light-by-light contribution to muon $g-2$ using our recently developed moment method. The connected diagrams and the leading disconnected diagrams are included. The calculation is performed on a $48^3 \times 96$ lattice with physical pion mass and 5.5 fm box size. We expect sizable finite volume and finite lattice spacing corrections to the results of these calculations which will be estimated in calculations to be carried out over the next 1-2 years.
We report progress on calculating the contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon from the disconnected hadronic diagrams with light and strange quarks and the valence QED contribution to the connected diagrams. The lattice QCD calculations use the highly-improved staggered quark (HISQ) formulation. The gauge configurations were generated by the MILC Collaboration with four flavors of HISQ sea quarks with physical sea-quark masses.
The polynomial subtraction method, a new numerical approach for reducing the noise variance of Lattice QCD disconnected matrix elements calculation, is introduced in this paper. We use the MinRes polynomial expansion of the QCD matrix as the approximation to the matrix inverse and get a significant reduction in the variance calculation. We compare our results with that of the perturbative subtraction and find that the new strategy yields a faster decrease in variance which increases with quark mass.
We calculate the disconnected contribution to isoscalar nucleon charges for scalar, axial and tensor channels of light and strange quarks. The calculation has been done with the Clover valence quarks on the MILC $N_f=2+1+1$ HISQ lattices whose light quark masses corresponding to the pion masses of 305 MeV and 217 MeV at $a \approx 0.12$ fm and 312 MeV at $a \approx 0.09$ fm. All-mode-averaging technique is used for the evaluation two-point functions. Disconnected quark loops are estimated by using the truncated solver method with Gaussian random noise sources. Contamination from the excited st…
We discuss the contribution of OZI-suppressed diagrams to the hyperfine splitting of charmonium in lattice QCD. We study valence quark mass regions from strange to charm quark masses. No contribution of the disconnected diagram is seen in the vector meson channel. In the pseudo-scalar channel and for valence quark masses around the strange quark, the disconnected contribution induces a considerable increase of the meson mass. This contribution quickly decreases as the quark mass increases. For charmonium the effect is very small although a decrease of the pseudoscalar mass induced by the disco…
The quark-line disconnected diagram is a potentially important ingredient in lattice QCD calculations of the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. It is also a notoriously difficult one to evaluate. Here, for the first time, we give an estimate of this contribution based on lattice QCD results that have a statistically significant signal, albeit at one value of the lattice spacing and an unphysically heavy value of the $u/d$ quark mass. We use HPQCD's method of determining the anomalous magnetic moment by reconstructing the Adler function from …
Expressions for the Wick contractions contributing to the scalar pion form-factor were computed model-independently in chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. The results reveal correlations amongst the different contractions in terms of low-energy constants and allow for extrapolating lattice data for individual Wick contractions. The quark disconnected contribution to the real part of the form factor turns out to be suppressed with respect to the quark connected one. The corresponding contribution to the scalar radius has the same size as the connected contribution and can there…
We describe a computation of the contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon from the disconnected part of the hadronic vacuum polarization. We use the highly-improved staggered quark (HISQ) formulation for the current density with gauge configurations generated with four flavors of HISQ sea quarks. The computation is performed by stochastic estimation of the current density using the truncated solver method combined with deflation of low-modes. The parameters are tuned to minimize the computational cost for a given target uncertainty in the current-current correlation function. …
We present an update of an on-going project to determine the disconnected contributions to hadronic structure, specifically, the scalar matrix element and the quark contribution to the spin of the nucleon.
There are generally two types of Wick contractions in lattice QCD calculations of a correlation function --- connected and disconnected ones. The disconnected contribution is difficult to calculate and noisy, thus it is often neglected. In the context of studying tetraquarks, hadronic molecules and meson-meson scattering, we show that whenever there are both connected and singly disconnected contractions, the singly disconnected part gives the leading order contribution, and thus should never be neglected. As an explicit example, we show that information about the scalar mesons sigma, f0(980),…
Computing disconnected diagrams in Lattice QCD (operator insertion in a quark loop) entails the computationally demanding problem of taking the trace of the all to all quark propagator. We first outline the basic algorithm used to compute a quark loop as well as improvements to this method. Then, we motivate and introduce an algorithm based on the synergy between hierarchical probing and singular value deflation. We present results for the chiral condensate using a 2+1-flavor clover ensemble and compare estimates of the nucleon charges with the basic algorithm.
For reliable comparison of the standard model prediction to the muon g-2 with its experimental value, the hadronic light-by-light scattering (HLbL) contribution must be calculated by lattice QCD simulation. HLbL contribution has many types of disconnected-type diagrams. Here, we start with recalling the point that must be taken care of in every method to calculate them by lattice QCD, and present one concrete method called nonperturbative QED method.
The spin decomposition of the proton is a long-standing topic of much interest in hadronic physics. Lattice QCD has had much success in calculating the connected contributions to the quark spin. However, complete calculations, which necessarily involve gluonic and strange-quark contributions, still present some challenges. These "disconnected" contributions typically involve small signals hidden against large statistical backgrounds and rely on computationally intensive stochastic techniques. In this work we demonstrate how a Feynman-Hellmann approach may be used to calculate such quantities, …
We present results on the isovector and isoscalar nucleon axial form factors including disconnected contributions,using an ensemble of $N_f =2$ twisted mass clover- improved Wilson fermions simulated with approximately the physical value of the pion mass. The light disconnected quark loops are computed using exact deflation, while the strange and the charm quark loops are evaluated using the truncated solver method. Techniques such as the summation and the two-state fits have been employed to access ground-state dominance.
Twisted mass fermions allow light quarks to be explored but with the consequence that there are mass splittings, such as between the neutral and charged pion. Using a direct calculation of the connected neutral pion correlator and stochastic methods to evaluate the disconnected correlations, we determine the neutral pion mass. We explore the dependence on lattice spacing and quark mass in quenched QCD. For dynamical QCD, we determine the sign of the splitting which is linked, via chiral PT, to the nature of the phase transition at small quark mass.
We calculate all neutral vector two-point functions in Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) to two-loop order and use these to estimate the ratio of disconnected to connected contributions as well as contributions involving the strange quark. We extend the ratio of $-1/10$ derived earlier in two flavour ChPT at one-loop order to a large part of the higher order contributions and discuss corrections to it. Our final estimate of the ratio disconnected to connected is negative and a few % in magnitude.
We report the first lattice QCD calculation of the hadronic vacuum polarization disconnected contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment at physical pion mass. The calculation uses a refined noise-reduction technique which enabled the control of statistical uncertainties at the desired level with modest computational effort. Measurements were performed on the $48^3 \times 96$ physical-pion-mass lattice generated by the RBC and UKQCD collaborations. We find $a_μ^{\rm HVP~(LO)~DISC} = -9.6(3.3)(2.3)\times 10^{-10}$, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic.
We report a lattice QCD calculation of the hadronic light-by-light contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment at physical pion mass. The calculation includes the connected diagrams and the leading, quark-line-disconnected diagrams. We incorporate algorithmic improvements developed in our previous work. The calculation was performed on the $48^3 \times 96$ ensemble generated with a physical-pion-mass and a 5.5 fm spatial extent by the RBC and UKQCD collaborations using the chiral, domain wall fermion (DWF) formulation. We find $a_μ^{\text{HLbL}} = 5.35 (1.35) \times 10^{- 10}$, where th…
We show how quark-disconnected and quark-connected contributions to hadronic n-point functions can be written as independent correlators for which one can derive expressions in partially quenched chiral effective theory. As an example we apply the idea to the case of the hadronic vacuum polarisation. In particular, we consider the cases of the Nf = 2 theory without and with a partially quenched strange quark and also the Nf = 2 + 1 theory. In the latter two cases a parameter-free prediction for the disconnected contribution at NLO in the effective theory is given. Finally we show how twisted b…
$π$-$N$ $σ$ term and proton axial vector matrix elements are calculated including disconnected contributions with a variant wall source method using the Wilson quark action at $β=5.7$ in quenched QCD. For the $σ$ term, we find $σ_{disc}/σ_{conn}=2.35(46)$ and $σ=44(6)$MeV--60(9)MeV. The fraction of proton spin carried by quarks is $ΔΣ=Δ{u}+Δ{d}+Δ{s}=+0.638(54)-0.347(46)-0.109(30)= +0.18(10)$.
We give a general introduction and discussion of the issues involved in using the twisted mass formulation of lattice fermions in the context of disconnected loop calculations, including a short orientation on the present experimental situation for nucleon strange quark form factors. A prototype calculation of the disconnected part of the nucleon scalar form factor is described.
A number of stochastic methods developed for the calculation of fermion loops are investigated and compared, in particular with respect to their efficiency when implemented on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). We assess the performance of the various methods by studying the convergence and statistical accuracy obtained for observables that require a large number of stochastic noise vectors, such as the isoscalar nucleon axial charge. The various methods are also examined for the evaluation of sigma-terms where noise reduction techniques specific to the twisted mass formulation can be utilized …
We perform a high statistics calculation of disconnected fermion loops on Graphics Processing Units for a range of nucleon matrix elements extracted using lattice QCD. The isoscalar electromagnetic and axial vector form factors, the sigma-terms and the momentum fraction and helicity are among the quantities we evaluate. We compare the disconnected contributions to the connected ones and give the physical implications on nucleon observables that probe its structure.
We calculate the nucleon strange quark content directly from disconnected three-point functions. Numerical simulations are carried out in two-flavor QCD using the overlap quark action with up and down quark masses down to a fifth of the physical strange quark mass. To improve the statistical accuracy, we calculate the nucleon two-point functions with the low-mode averaging technique, whereas the all-to-all quark propagator is used for the disconnected quark loop. We obtain the y parameter, which is the ratio of the strange and light quark contents, y = 0.024(45) at the physical point. This is …
We point out that the sum of the strange-quark-connected and full, three-flavor quark-disconnected contributions to the leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization contribution, $a_μ^{\mathrm{LO,HVP}}$, to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, is a physical observable, and provide a data-based determination of this quantity in the isospin limit. The result, $40.1(1.5)\times 10^{-10}$, or $38.7(2.0)\times 10^{-10}$, depending on which data compilation is used, serves as a target of comparison for lattice calculations of the same isospin-limit combination. Subtracting from this result the av…
We study the chiral properties of domain-wall quarks at high temperatures on an ensemble of quenched configurations. Low lying eigenmodes of the Dirac operator are calculated and used to check the extent to which the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is obeyed on lattices with finite $N_5$. We calculate the connected and disconnected screening propagators for the lowest mass scalar and pseudoscalar mesons in the sectors of different topological charge and note that they behave as expected. Separating out the would-be zero eigenmodes enables us to accurately estimate the disconnected propagators with…
The hadronic vacuum polarization can be determined from the vector correlator in a mixed time-momentum representation. We explicitly calculate the disconnected contribution to the vector correlator, both in the $N_f = 2$ theory and with an additional quenched strange quark, using non-perturbatively $O(a)$-improved Wilson fermions. All-to-all propagators are computed using stochastic sources and a generalized hopping parameter expansion. Combining the result with the dominant connected contribution, we are able to estimate an upper bound for the systematic error that arises from neglecting the …
We present a lattice determination of the disconnected contributions to the leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization (HVP) to the muon anomalous magnetic moment in the so-called short and intermediate time-distance windows. We employ gauge ensembles produced by the Extended Twisted Mass Collaboration (ETMC) with $N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ flavours of Wilson twisted-mass clover-improved quarks with masses approximately tuned to their physical value. We take the continuum limit employing three lattice spacings at about 0.08, 0.07 and 0.06 fm.
The magnetic polarisability of the neutral pion has been calculated using the background field method in lattice QCD. These early results do not consider the effect of the disconnected loop contractions arising from the breaking of charge symmetry in a background magnetic field. Recent work in chiral perturbation theory has shown that these quark-self-annihilation contractions provide the leading loop-order contributions to the magnetic polarisability. A first investigation of these contractions in a background magnetic field is presented.
The quark-connected and the quark-disconnected Wick contractions contributing to the pion's scalar form factor are computed in the two and in the three flavour chiral effective theory at next-to-leading order. While the quark-disconnected contribution to the form factor itself turns out to be power-counting suppressed its contribution to the scalar radius is of the same order of magnitude as the one of the quark-connected contribution. This result underlines that neglecting quark-disconnected contributions in simulations of lattice QCD can cause significant systematic effects. The technique us…
We calculate for the first time the form factors of the semi-leptonic decays of the $D_s$ meson to $η$ and $η^\prime$ using lattice techniques. As a by-product of the calculation we obtain the masses and leading distribution amplitudes of the $η$ and $η^\prime$ mesons. We use $N_f=2+1$ non-perturbatively improved clover fermions on configurations with a lattice spacing $a\sim 0.075$ fm. We are able to obtain clear signals for relevant matrix elements, using several noise reduction techniques, both for the connected and disconnected contributions. This includes a new method for reducing the var…
We present a calculation of the nucleon sigma term on two-flavor QCD configurations with dynamical overlap fermions. We analyse the lattice data for the nucleon mass using the baryon chiral perturbation theory. Using partially quenched data sets, we extract the connected and disconnected contributions to the nucleon sigma term separately. Chiral symmetry on the lattice simplifies the determination of the disconnected contribution. We find that the strange quark content, which determines the neutralino dark matter reaction rate with nucleon through the Higgs boson exchange, is much smaller than…
A full, high-statistic I=0 and I=2 $π-π$ scattering calculation including the disconnected diagram is performed on 2+1 flavor, domain wall fermion gauge configurations generated using the Iwasaki gauge action with $β=2.13$, a $16^3\times32$ volume with $L_s=16$ and $a^{-1}=1.73GeV$. Using the same light quark propagators and additional strange quark propagators, we study the $η$ and $η^\prime$ mesons, where disconnected diagrams also make an important contribution. Our $π-π$ calculation shows a good exponentially decaying signal from the disconnected graph, which makes a small contribution to …
Method of calculating hadron multi-point functions and disconnected quark loop contributions which are not readily accessible through conventional techniques is proposed. Results are reported for pion-pion, pion-nucleon and nucleon-nucleon scattering lengths and the flavor singlet-non singlet meson mass splitting estimated in quenched QCD.
We evaluate the strange nucleon electromagnetic form factors using an ensemble of gauge configurations generated with two degenerate maximally twisted mass clover-improved fermions with mass tuned to approximately reproduce the physical pion mass. In addition, we present results for the disconnected light quark contributions to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors. Improved stochastic methods are employed leading to high-precision results. The momentum dependence of the disconnected contributions is fitted using the model-independent z-expansion. We extract the magnetic moment and the elec…
The ratio of the strange quark momentum fraction $\langle x\rangle_{s+\bar{s}}$ to that of light quark $u$ or $d$ in disconnected insertions (DI) is calculated on the lattice with overlap fermions on four domain wall fermion ensembles. These ensembles cover three lattice spacings, three volumes and several pion masses including the physical one, from which a global fitting is carried out. A complete nonperturbative renormalization and the mixing between the quark and glue operators are taken into account. We find the ratio to be $\langle x\rangle_{s+\bar{s}}/\langle x\rangle_{u+\bar{u}} ({\rm …
Noise subtraction methods are a set of techniques that aim to reduce the variance of signals in LQCD which are often flooded with noise. The standard approach is a pertubative subtraction. In this work, we demonstrate the abilities of our new noise subtraction methods with methods which show considerable improvement over pertubative subtraction in the reduction of the variance for the set of LQCD operators that were studied. The methods were tested at $κ_{crit}$ on quenched configurations, as well as on dynamical quark configurations at $κ= 0.1453$. A significant improvement in the reduction o…
We evaluate the matrix element of $\bar{q} q$ in hadron states on a lattice. We find substantial mixing of the connected and disconnected contributions so that the lattice result that the disconnected contribution to the nucleon is large does not imply that the $\bar{s} s$ content is large. This has implications for dark matter searches.
We report on progress in measuring disconnected correlators associated with pseudoscalar flavor-singlet mesons. This will eventually allow us to compute the masses of the eta and eta' mesons. Flavor-singlet physics also presents an interesting test of the staggered fermion formulation, as disconnected correlators are sensitive to whether the same action governs both sea quarks and valence quarks. It can also help test the validity of the ``fourth-root trick'' used in unquenched lattice calculations where the number of flavors $N_f<4$.
The accuracy of the lattice QCD computation of hadron-hadron scattering at low isospin depends critically on the ability to compute correlation functions with fermionic disconnected Wick contractions. This happens, for instance, in isospin $I=0$ $ππ$ scattering, which receives contributions from rectangular and vacuum types of contractions among other easier calculable ones. Combining Lüscher's formula and partially-quenched chiral perturbation theory, we provide precise theory predictions of the discrete energy levels extracted from specific linear combinations of lattice correlation function…
Light scalar-quarks ϕ(colored scalar particles or idealized diquarks) and their color-singlet hadronic states are studied with quenched SU(3)_c lattice QCD in terms of mass generation in strong interaction without chiral symmetry breaking. We investigate ``scalar-quark mesons'' ϕ^\dagger ϕand ``scalar-quark baryons'' ϕϕϕwhich are the bound states of scalar-quarks ϕ. We also investigate the bound states of scalar-quarks ϕand quarks ψ, i.e., ϕ^\dagger ψ, ψψϕand ϕϕψ, which we name ``chimera hadrons''. All the new-type hadrons including ϕare found to have a large mass even for zero bare scalar-qua…
We calculate the leading order hadronic contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment using twisted mass lattice QCD. The pion masses range from 330 MeV to 650 MeV. We use two lattice spacings, a=0.079 fm and 0.063 fm, to study lattice artifacts. Finite-size effects are studied for two values of the pion mass, and we calculate the disconnected contributions for four ensembles. Particular attention is paid to the dominant contributions of the vector mesons, both phenomenologically and from our lattice calculation.
We extend the study of lowest moments, $<x>$ and $<x^2>$, of the parton distribution function of the nucleon to include those of the sea quarks; this entails a disconnected insertion calculation in lattice QCD. This is carried out on a $16^3 \times 24$ quenched lattice with Wilson fermion. The quark loops are calculated with $Z_2$ noise vectors and unbiased subtractions, and multiple nucleon sources are employed to reduce the statistical errors. We obtain 5$σ$ signals for $<x>$ for the $u,d,$ and $s$ quarks, but $<x^2>$ is consistent with zero within errors. We provide results for both the con…
We present UKQCD's latest results for the static quark potential and light hadron spectrum obtained from matched simulations using two flavours of dynamical quarks. We report that using matched ensembles helps disentangle screening effects from discretisation errors in the static quark potential.
The light-quark sector of the Lambda(1405) baryon is examined in the context of the recent discovery of a dominant antikaon-nucleon composition at low quark masses. Further evidence for this interpretation of the Lambda(1405) is presented, by calculating the u and d quark contributions to the Lambda(1405) magnetic form factors in lattice QCD. The extent to which these quantities are consistent with the exotic molecular description can then be quantified by comparing the results with the equivalent nucleon form factors. Drawing on a recent extension of the graded-symmetry approach for the flavo…
We made an extensive study of the light hadron spectrum using the Wilson gauge action and Kogut-Susskind quarks. Using both dynamical quarks and the quenched approximation, we determine hadron masses for five and four gauge couplings respectively, with at least five quark masses at each coupling. In the continuum limit, we find a significant difference between two flavors of dynamical quarks and the quenched approximation for a range of quark masses.
The path-integral formulation of the hadronic tensor W_{μν} of deep inelastic scattering is reviewed. It is shown that there are 3 gauge invariant and topologically distinct contributions. The separation of the connected sea partons from those of the disconnected sea can be achieved with a combination of the global fit of the parton distribution function (PDF), the semi-inclusive DIS data on the strange PDF and the lattice calculation of the ratio of the strange to $u/d$ momentum fraction in the disconnected insertion. We shall discuss numerical issues associated with lattice calculation of th…
We present and test a new method to compute the hadronic vacuum polarization function in lattice simulations. This can then be used, e.g., to determine the leading hadronic contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. The method is based on computing susceptibilities with respect to external electromagnetic plane wave fields and allows for a precision determination of both the connected and the disconnected contributions to the vacuum polarization. We demonstrate that the statistical errors obtained with our method are much smaller than those quoted in previous lattice studies, p…
We calculate the disconnected contribution to the form factor for the semileptonic decay of a D-meson into a final state, containing a flavor singlet eta meson. We use QCDSF n_f=2+1 configurations at the flavor symmetric point m_u=m_d=m_s and the partially quenched approximation for the relativistic charm quark. Several acceleration and noise reduction techniques for the stochastic estimation of the disconnected loop are tested.
The separation of the connected and disconnected sea partons, which were uncovered in the Euclidean path-integral formulation of the hadronic tensor, is accommodated with an alternative parametrization of the non-perturbative parton distribution functions in the CT18 global analysis. This is achieved with the help of the distinct small $x$ behaviours of these two sea partons and the constraint from the lattice calculation of the ratio of the strange momentum fraction to that of the $\bar u$ or $\bar d$ in the disconnected insertion. The whole dataset of CT18 is used in this CT18CS fit. The imp…
