We present results of the masses of taste non-Goldstone $(F \ne ξ_5)$ pions and kaons calculated up to the next-to-leading order in the SU(3) staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT). The results can be used to fit data and to understand taste symmetry breaking effect quantitatively. The final expressions for the non-Goldstone masses contain 20 low energy constants unique to the non-Goldstone sector. We have calculated the several cases such as the full QCD, partially quenched QCD, and quenched QCD in the $N_f=1+1+1$ flavor and $N_f=2+1$ flavor cases in the SU(3) and SU(2) SChPT. In this paper, we present only the SU(3) part.
We calculate the axial current decay constants of taste non-Goldstone pions and kaons in staggered chiral perturbation theory through next-to-leading order. The results are a simple generalization of the results for the taste Goldstone case. New low-energy couplings are limited to analytic corrections that vanish in the continuum limit; certain coefficients of the chiral logarithms are modified, but they contain no new couplings. We report results for quenched, fully dynamical, and partially quenched cases of interest in the chiral SU(3) and SU(2) theories.
We calculate the masses of taste non-Goldstone pions and kaons in staggered chiral perturbation theory through next-to-leading order in the standard power counting. The results can be used to quantitatively understand taste violations in existing lattice data generated with staggered fermions and to extract the $u$, $d$, and $s$ quark masses and Gasser-Leutwyler parameters from the experimentally observed spectrum. The expressions for the non-Goldstone masses contain low-energy couplings unique to the non-Goldstone sector. With two exceptions these enter as coefficients of analytic terms; all …
We calculate the next-to-leading order axial current decay constants of taste non-Goldstone pions and kaons in staggered chiral perturbation theory. This is an extension of the taste Goldstone decay constants calculation to that of the non-Goldstone tastes. We present results for the partially quenched case in the SU(3) and SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theories and discuss the difference between the taste Goldstone and non-Goldstone cases.
We carry out lattice simulations of two-color QCD and spectroscopy at finite density with two flavors of rooted-staggered quarks and a diquark source term. As in a previous four-flavor study, for small values of the inverse gauge coupling we observe a Goldstone spectrum which reflects the symmetry-breaking pattern of a Gaussian symplectic chiral random-matrix ensemble (GSE) with Dyson index $β_D=4$, which corresponds to any-color QCD with adjoint quarks in the continuum instead of QC$_2$D wih fundamental quarks. We show that this unphysical behavior occurs only inside of the bulk phase of $SU(…
By fitting pion masses and decay constants from 2+1 flavor staggered lattice simulations to the predictions of NLO and NNLO SU(2) chiral perturbation theory we determine the low-energy constants l_3 and l_4. The lattice ensembles were generated by the Wuppertal-Budapest collaboration and cover pion masses in the range of 135 to 435 MeV and lattice scales between 0.7 and 2.0 GeV. By choosing a suitable scaling trajectory, we were able to demonstrate that precise and stable results for the LECs can be obtained from continuum ChPT to NLO. The pion masses available in this work also allow us to st…
We study the simultaneous effect of finite volume and finite lattice spacing corrections in the framework of chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) in the epsilon regime, for both the Wilson and staggered formulations. In particular the finite volume corrections to the low energy constants (LECs) in Wilson and staggered ChPT are computed to next-to-leading order (NLO) in the ε-expansion. For Wilson with N_f = 2 flavours and staggered with generic N_f the partition function at NLO can be rewritten as the LO partition function with renormalized effective LECs.
We discuss the structure of the NLO corrections to the chiral formulae for mesonic scattering processes in mixed action simulations using Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks and staggered sea quarks. In particular, we show that the analytic contribution of the NLO chiral Lagrangian is the same as in QCD. We also comment on how this result restricts the dependence of the amplitudes on the unknown parameter C_Mix appearing in the chiral theory appropriate for these systems. We conclude with some comments on the explicit scattering lengths.
We merge heavy quark effective theory with staggered chiral perturbation theory to calculate heavy-light (B, D) meson quantities. We present results at NLO for the $B(D)$ meson decay constant in the partially quenched and full QCD cases, and discuss the calculation of the form factors for $B(D) \to π(K) \ell ν$ decays.
We present recent results from lattice simulations of 2+1 flavors of improved staggered fermions at zero baryon number density near the high temperature crossover. Included are new results from simulations of asqtad fermions at Nt = 12 and a nearly physical Goldstone pion mass and from simulations of HISQ fermions at Nt = 6 and 8. We focus on observables sensitive to chiral symmetry and confinement. A companion HotQCD talk discusses the effects of staggered-fermion taste-symmetry breaking on thermodynamic quantities.
We compute next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections in the ε-regime of Wilson (WChPT) and Staggered Chiral Perturbation Theory (SChPT). A difference between the two is that in WChPT already at NLO, that is at O(ε^2), new low energy constants (LECs) contribute, whereas in SChPT they only enter at O(ε^4). We first determine the NLO corrections in WChPT for SU(2), and for U(N_f) at fixed index. This implies finite-volume corrections to the phase boundary between the Aoki phase and the Sharpe-Singleton scenario via corrections to the mean field potential. We also compute NLO corrections to the two-…
An unquenched calculation of the form factor for $B\to D^* l ν$ is needed to improve the determination of $|V_{cb}|$. The MILC lattices, computed with a 2+1 improved staggered action for the light quarks, are well suited to this purpose. The relevant staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT) must be known in order to correctly account for the "taste" breaking discretization effects associated with the staggered quarks to NLO in $1/ m_{D^*}$. This SChPT calculation is presented.
We measure the pion mass and decay constant on ensembles generated by the Wuppertal-Budapest Collaboration, and extract the NLO low-energy constants l_3 and l_4 of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory. The data are generated in 2+1 flavor simulations with Symanzik glue and 2-fold stout-smeared staggered fermions, with pion masses varying from 135 MeV to 400 MeV, lattice scales between 0.7 GeV and 2.0 GeV, and m_s kept at its physical value. Furthermore, by excluding the lightest mass points, we are able to test the reliability of SU(2) chPT as a tool to extrapolate towards the physical point from …
We have extended staggered chiral perturbation theory to O(a^2 p^2), O(a^4), and O(a^2 m), the orders necessary for a full next-to-leading order calculation of pseudo-Goldstone boson masses and decay constants including taste-symmetry violations. We present predictions relating SO(4) taste-breaking splittings in masses, pseudoscalar decay constants, and dispersion relations. These can be used to test the fourth-root trick.
One exciting possibility of new physics beyond the Standard Model is that the fundamental Higgs sector is replaced by a strongly-interacting gauge theory, known as technicolor. A viable theory must break chiral symmetry dynamically, like in QCD, to generate Goldstone bosons which become the longitudinal components of the W and Z. By measuring the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator, one can determine if chiral symmetry is in fact spontaneously broken. We simulate SU(3) gauge theory with n_s=2 and 3 staggered flavors in the fundamental representation, corresponding to N_f=8 and 12 flavors in the …
We present results for $B_K$ calculated using HYP-smeared improved staggered fermions on the MILC asqtad lattices. In this report, the data is analyzed using the results of SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theory (SChPT). We outline the derivation of the NLO SU(2) SChPT result, explain our fitting procedure, and outline how we estimate systematic errors. We also show the light sea-quark mass and lattice spacing dependence for both SU(2) and SU(3)-based analyses. Our preliminary result from the SU(2) analysis is $B_K(\text{NDR}, μ= 2 \text{GeV}) = 0.512 \pm 0.014 \pm 0.034$ and $\hat{B}_K = …
I study two-flavor staggered chiral perturbation theory in the light pseudoscalar sector. The pion mass and decay constant are calculated through NLO in the partially-quenched case. In the limit where the strange quark mass is large compared to the light quark masses and the taste splittings, I show that the SU(2) staggered chiral theory emerges from the SU(3) staggered chiral theory, as expected. Explicit relations between SU(2) and SU(3) low energy constants and taste-violating parameters are given. The results are useful for SU(2) chiral fits to asqtad data and allow one to incorporate effe…
Staggered fermions with 4 tastes are expected to describe 4-flavor QCD in the continuum limit, therefore at finite lattice spacing the staggered determinant should be equivalent to an SU(4) flavor-symmetric system up to lattice artifacts. This equivalence is the starting point of the 4th root trick used to reduce the number of fermion flavors and provides the only consistent description of 2 or 1 flavor systems. In this paper we argue that the quark mass of the underlying flavor symmetric theory differs from the staggered mass by an additive term due to the taste breaking of the staggered acti…
We present preliminary results for $B_K$ calculated using improved staggered fermions with a mixed action (HYP-smeared staggered valence quarks and AsqTad staggered sea quarks). We investigate the effect of non-degenerate quarks on $B_K$ and attempt to estimate the ${\cal O}(a^2)$ effect due to non-Goldstone pions in loops. We fit the data to continuum partially quenched chiral perturbation theory. We find that the quality of fit for $B_K$ improves if we include non-degenerate quark mass combinations. We also observe, however, that the fitting curve deviates from the data points in the light q…
We investigate the properties of staggered-fermion lattice QCD in which the fourth root of the fermion determinant is taken. We show that this theory is non-local at non-zero lattice spacing $a$, and that the non-locality is caused by the breaking of taste symmetry at $a\ne 0$. We then present a renormalization-group based argument that the theory restores taste symmetry in the continuum limit. As a consequence the theory is local in that limit, and falls into the correct universality class. Finally, we argue that the correct effective theory for the physics of Goldstone bosons at $a\ne 0$ is …
Different versions of improved staggered fermions can be used as valence quarks to reduce discretization effects in lattice QCD calculations while increasing statistics on existing staggered gauge ensembles. Such mixed-action simulations can be used to improve determinations of light quark masses, Gasser-Leutwyler couplings, decay constants, and other parameters relevant to particle phenomenology. We recall the generalization of ordinary, unmixed staggered chiral perturbation theory required to describe data from lattice calculations with a mixed action such as with HYP staggered valence quark…
Lattice QCD calculations with different staggered valence and sea quarks can be used to improve determinations of quark masses, Gasser-Leutwyler couplings, and other parameters relevant to phenomenology. We calculate the masses and decay constants of flavored pions and kaons through next-to-leading order in staggered-valence, staggered-sea mixed-action chiral perturbation theory. We present the results in the valence-valence and valence-sea sectors, for all tastes. As in unmixed theories, the taste-pseudoscalar, valence-valence mesons are exact Goldstone bosons in the chiral limit, at non-zero…
In the light pseudoscalar sector, we study rooted staggered chiral perturbation theory in the two-flavor case. The pion mass and decay constant are calculated through NLO for a partially-quenched theory. In the limit where the strange quark mass is large compared to the light quark masses and the taste splittings, we show that the SU(2) staggered chiral theory emerges from the SU(3) staggered chiral theory, as expected. Explicit relations between SU(2) and SU(3) low energy constants and taste-violating parameters are given. A brief summary of updated SU(2) chiral fits to the MILC lattice data …
We study taste and Euclidean rotational symmetry violation for staggered fermions at nonzero lattice spacing using staggered chiral perturbation theory. We extend the staggered chiral Lagrangian to O(a^2 p^2), O(a^4) and O(a^2 m), the orders necessary for a full next-to-leading order calculation of pseudo-Goldstone boson masses and decay constants including analytic terms. We then calculate a number of SO(4) taste-breaking quantities, which involve only a small subset of these NLO operators. We predict relationships between SO(4) taste-breaking splittings in masses, pseudoscalar decay constant…
We present the current status of the MILC collaboration's calculations of the properties of the light pseudoscalar meson sector. We use asqtad staggered ensembles with 2+1 dynamical flavors down to $a \approx 0.045$ fm and light quark mass down to 0.05 $m_s$. Here we describe fits to the data using chiral forms from SU(3) chiral perturbation theory, including all staggered taste violations at NLO and the continuum NNLO chiral logarithms. We emphasize issues of convergence of the chiral expansion.
The dependence of the pseudoscalar meson masses and decay constants on sea and valence quark masses is compared to next-to-leading order (NLO) Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT). The numerical simulations with two light dynamical quark flavors are performed with the Wilson-quark lattice action at gauge coupling beta=5.1 and hopping parameters kappa=0.176, 0.1765, 0.177 on a 16^4 lattice. O(a) lattice artifacts are taken into account by applying chiral perturbation theory for the Wilson lattice action. The values of the relevant combinations of Gasser-Leutwyler constants L_4, L_5, L_6 and L_8 ar…
We present results from our simulations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) with four flavors of quarks: u, d, s, and c. These simulations are performed with a one-loop Symanzik improved gauge action, and the highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) action. We are generating gauge configurations with four values of the lattice spacing ranging from 0.06 fm to 0.15 fm, and three values of the light quark mass, including the value for which the Goldstone pion mass is equal to the physical pion mass. We discuss simulation algorithms, scale setting, taste symmetry breaking, and the autocorrelations of va…
In this contribution we revisit simulations of two-color QCD with rooted staggered quarks at finite density, where baryon-number spontaneously breaks and a diquark condensate forms. We thereby pay special attention to simulating outside the lattice-artifact bulk phase, in which $Z_2$ monopoles condense, and investigate some of the consequences of this, e.g. on the chiral and the diquark condensate which were known to be well described by chiral effective field theory. Not surprisingly, on finer lattices outside the bulk phase the quark condensate now requires additive renormalization before it…
I present a selection of recent lattice data by major collaborations for the pseudo-Goldstone boson masses in full ($N_f=2$) QCD, where the valence quarks are chosen exactly degenerate with the sea quarks. At least the more chiral points should be consistent with Chiral Perturbation Theory for the latter to be useful in extrapolating to physical masses. Perspectives to reliably determine NLO Gasser-Leutwyler coefficients are discussed.
We investigate the chiral phase transition in the strong coupling lattice QCD (SC-LQCD) at finite temperature and density with finite coupling effects. We adopt one species of staggered fermion, and develop an analytic formulation based on strong coupling and cluster expansions. We derive the effective potential as a function of two order parameters, the chiral condensate sigma and the vector potential ω_τ, in a self-consistent treatment of the next-to-leading order (NLO) and the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) effective action terms. Finite coupling effects lead to modifications of quark…
We present the first observation of a flavor-singlet scalar meson as light as the pion in $N_f=8$ QCD on the lattice, using the Highly Improved Staggered Quark action. Such a light scalar meson can be regarded as a composite Higgs with mass 125 GeV. In accord with our previous lattice results showing that the theory exhibits walking behavior, the light scalar may be a technidilaton, a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of the approximate scale symmetry in walking technicolor.
We report on the calculation by the MILC Collaboration of the electromagnetic effects on kaon and pion masses. These masses are computed in QCD with dynamical (asqtad staggered) quarks plus quenched photons at three lattice spacings varying from 0.12 to 0.06 fm. The masses are fit to staggered chiral perturbation theory with NLO electromagnetic terms, as well as analytic terms at higher order. We extrapolate the results to physical light-quark masses and to the continuum limit. At the current stage of the analysis, most, but not all, of the systematic errors have been estimated. The main goal …
We identify the Goldstone modes appropriate to the low and high density phases of SU(2) lattice gauge theory with staggered fermions. We present hybrid Monte Carlo simulation results for susceptibilities on a 6^4 lattice at beta=1.5, m=0.05. We specify how to implement a diquark source term in a lattice simulation and present first measurements of the lattice diquark condensate as a function of the diquark source.
We study QCD with two staggered Dirac fermions both in the fundamental (QCD) and the adjoint representation (aQCD) near the chiral transition. The aim is to find the universality class of the chiral transition and to verify Goldstone effects below the transition. We investigate aQCD, because in that theory the deconfinement and the chiral transitions occur at different temperatures T_d<T_c. Here, we show that the scaling behaviour of the chiral condensate in the vicinity of β_c is in full agreeement with that of the 3d O(2) universality class. In the region T_d<T<T_c we confirm the quark mass …
We present preliminary results for $B_K$ from the MILC ultrafine lattices, based on a partial ensemble of 305 configurations. We use HYP-smeared improved staggered valence quarks. The analysis is done using fitting forms based on both SU(2) and SU(3) staggered chiral perturbation thery. For the SU(2) analysis, we find that the result using the NLO fit function is consistent with that from a partial NNLO fit. For the SU(3) analysis, where we have to use partially constrained fits due to the number of fit parameters, we find that our two preferred fits ("N-BB1" and "N-BB2") are also consistent, …
A first study of critical behavior in the vicinity of the chiral phase transition of (2+1)-flavor QCD is presented. We analyze the quark mass and volume dependence of the chiral condensate and chiral susceptibilities in QCD with two degenerate light quark masses and a strange quark. The strange quark mass (m_s) is chosen close to its physical value; the two degenerate light quark masses (m_l) are varied in a wide range 1/80 \le m_l/m_s \le 2/5, where the smallest light quark mass value corresponds to a pseudo-scalar Goldstone mass of about 75 MeV. All calculations are performed with staggered …
A spectroscopic method for staggered fermions based on thermodynamical considerations is proposed. The canonical partition functions corresponding to the different quark number sectors are expressed in the low temperature limit as polynomials of the eigenvalues of the reduced fermion matrix. Taking the zero temperature limit yields the masses of the lowest states. The method is successfully applied to the Goldstone pion and both dynamical and quenched results are presented showing good agreement with that of standard spectroscopy. Though in principle the method can be used to obtain the baryon…
We present recent results on the QCD equation of state with 2+1+1 flavors of highly improved staggered quarks (HISQ). We focus on three sets of ensembles with temporal extent 6, 8 and 10, that reach up to temperatures of 967, 725 and 580 MeV, respectively. The strange and charm quark masses are tuned to the physical values and the light quarks mass is set to one fifth of the strange. This corresponds to a Goldstone pion of about 300 MeV.
We extend dilaton chiral perturbation theory (dChPT) to include the taste splittings in the Nambu--Goldstone sector observed in lattice simulations of near-conformal theories with staggered fermions. We then apply dChPT to a recent simulation by the LSD collaboration of the SU(3) gauge theory with 8 fermions in the fundamental representation, which is believed to exhibit near-conformal behavior in the infrared, and in which a light singlet scalar state, nearly degenerate with the pions, has been found. We find that the mesonic sector of this theory can be successfully described by dChPT, inclu…
We investigate the fate of the Roberge-Weiss endpoint transition and its connection with the restoration of chiral symmetry as the chiral limit of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD is approached. We adopt a stout staggered discretization on lattices with $N_t = 4$ sites in the temporal direction; the chiral limit is approached maintaining a constant physical value of the strange-to-light mass ratio and exploring three different light quark masses, corresponding to pseudo-Goldstone pion masses $m_π\simeq 100, 70$ and 50 MeV around the transition. A finite size scaling analysis provides evidence that the transiti…
We investigate the chiral phase transition in the strong coupling lattice QCD at finite temperature and density with finite coupling effects. We adopt one species of staggered fermion, and develop an analytic formulation based on strong coupling and cluster expansions. We derive the effective potential as a function of two order parameters, the chiral condensate sigma and the quark number density $ρ_q$, in a self-consistent treatment of the next-to-leading order (NLO) effective action terms. NLO contributions lead to modifications of quark mass, chemical potential and the quark wave function r…
We present updated results on chiral phase structure in (2+1)-flavor ($N_f$=2+1) and 3-flavor ($N_f=3$) QCD based on the simulations using Highly Improved Staggered Quarks on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ$ =6 at vanishing baryon chemical potential. In $N_f$=2+1 QCD we have performed simulations with a strange quark fixed to its physical value and two degenerate light quarks whose values are adjusted to have 5 values of Goldstone pion masses in the region of 160 - 80 MeV in the continuum limit. The universal scaling behavior of chiral condensates as well as chiral susceptibilities is discu…
We analyze the pseudo-critical behavior of three-flavor QCD using highly improved staggered quarks (HISQ) on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ=8$ and for quark masses corresponding to a pseudoscalar Goldstone mass in the range $80 ~ {\rm MeV} ~ \lesssim ~ m_π~ \lesssim ~ 140 ~ {\rm MeV}$. Our findings are consistent with the occurrence of a second order chiral phase transition at vanishing values of the quark masses. The chiral phase transition temperature at this finite value of the lattice spacing is determined to be $T_c = 98_{-6}^{+3}~{\rm MeV}$. A comparison with a corresponding analysis…
We present a method of simulating lattice QCD at nonzero chemical potential in the chiral limit. By adding a weak four-fermi interaction to the standard staggered fermion SU(3) QCD action, we produce an algorithm in which the limit of massless fermions is well-behaved and physical. Using configurations at zero chemical potential, and an exact fugacity expansion of the fermion determinant, we can simulate QCD at nonzero chemical potential and evade the notorious problem of the complex action. Small lattice simulations give physical results: At strong gauge coupling the critical chemical potenti…
We present updated studies on the chiral phase transition in $N_{f}=2+1$ QCD. Simulations have been carried out using Highly Improved Staggered Quarks (HISQ) on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ = 6$ at vanishing baryon chemical potential. We updated our previous study \cite{Ding:2015pmg} by extending the temperature window from (140 MeV, 150 MeV) to (140 MeV, 170 MeV). The strange quark mass was chosen to its physical value $m_{s}^{\mathrm{phy}}$, and five values of two degenerate light quark masses are varied from $m_{s}^{\mathrm{phy}}/80$ to $m_{s}^{\mathrm{phy}}/20$ which correspond to a …
This talk provides a summary of the results obtained by the HotQCD collaboration on the equation of state and the crossover transition in 2+1 flavor QCD. We investigate bulk thermodynamic quantities - energy density, pressure, entropy density, and the speed of sound over the temperature range 140 < T < 540 MeV. These results have been obtained on lattices of temporal size N_tau = 6 and 8 and with two improved staggered fermion actions, asqtad and p4. Our most extensive results are with masses of the two degenerate light quarks set at m_l = 0.1 m_s corresponding to the Goldstone pion mass m_pi …
We present studies of universal properties of the chiral phase transition in $N_f$=2+1 QCD based on the simulations using Highly Improved Staggered fermions on lattices with temporal extent $N_τ$=6. We analyze the quark mass and volume dependence of the chiral condensates and chiral susceptibilities in QCD with two degenerate light quarks and a strange quark. The strange quark mass is chosen to be fixed to its physical value ($m^{phy}_s$) and five values of light quark masses ($m_l$) that are varied in the interval 1/20$\gtrsim m_l/m^{phy}_s \gtrsim$1/80. Here various quark masses correspond t…
The chiral phase transition temperature $T_{c}^{0}$ is a fundamental quantity of QCD. To determine this quantity we have performed simulations of (2 + 1)-flavor QCD using the Highly Improved Staggered Quarks (HISQ/tree) action on $N_τ=6, 8$ and 12 lattices with aspect ratios $N_σ/N_τ$ ranging from 4 to 8. In our simulations the strange quark mass is fixed to its physical value $m_{s}^{\rm{phy}}$, and the values of two degenerate light quark masses $m_{l}$ are varied from $m_{s}^{\rm{phy}}/20$ to $m_{s}^{\rm{phy}}/160$ which correspond to a Goldstone pion mass $m_π$ ranging from 160 MeV to 55 M…
