We present the first direct $N_f=2$ lattice QCD computation of two- and three-$π^+$ scattering quantities that includes an ensemble at the physical point. We study the quark mass dependence of the two-pion phase shift, and the three-particle interaction parameters. We also compare to phenomenology and chiral perturbation theory (ChPT). In the two-particle sector, we observe good agreement to the phenomenological fits in $s$- and $d$-wave, and obtain $M_πa_0 = -0.0481(86)$ at the physical point from a direct computation. In the three-particle sector, we observe reasonable agreement at threshold to the leading order chiral expansion, i.e.\@ a mildly attractive three-particle contact term. In contrast, we observe that the energy-dependent part of the three-particle quasilocal scattering quantity is not well described by leading order ChPT.
In this paper, we consider two-flavor QCD at zero temperature and finite isospin chemical potential ($μ_I$) using a model-independent analysis within chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. We calculate the effective potential, the chiral condensate and the pion condensate in the pion-condensed phase at both zero and nonzero pionic source. We compare our finite pionic source results for the chiral condensate and the pion condensate with recent (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD results and find that they are in excellent agreement.
Pion-pion elastic scattering in the isospin I=2 channel is investigated in two-flavor dynamical lattice QCD. Six ensembles are used with lattices elongated in one of the spatial dimensions at two quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of 315 MeV and 226 MeV. The energy of the low-lying states below the inelastic threshold are extracted in each case using the standard variational method.The extracted finite-volume spectrum is fitted by the inverse amplitude method simultaneously for both quark masses and extrapolated thereafter to the physical point. The resulting phase-shifts and scattering…
We present a lattice computation of the isospin-breaking corrections to pseudoscalar meson masses using the gauge configurations produced by the European Twisted Mass collaboration with $N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ dynamical quarks at three values of the lattice spacing ($a \simeq 0.062, 0.082$ and $0.089$ fm) with pion masses in the range $M_π\simeq 210 - 450$ MeV. The strange and charm quark masses are tuned at their physical values. We adopt the RM123 method based on the combined expansion of the path integral in powers of the $d$- and $u$-quark mass difference ($\widehat{m}_d - \widehat{m}_u$) and of…
We study the phase diagram of QCD at finite isospin density using two flavors of staggered quarks. We investigate the low temperature region of the phase diagram where we find a pion condensation phase at high chemical potential. We started a basic analysis of the spectrum at finite isospin density. In particular, we measured pion, rho and nucleon masses inside and outside of the pion condensation phase. In agreement with previous studies in two-color QCD at finite baryon density we find that the Polyakov loop does not depend on the density in the staggered formulation.
Using the framework of non-relativistic effective field theory, the finite-volume ground-state energy shift is calculated up-to-and-including $O(L^{-6})$ for the system of three pions in the channel with the total isospin $I=1$. The relativistic corrections are included perturbatively, up to the same order in the inverse of the box size $L$. The obtained explicit expression, together with the known result for the system with maximal isospin $I=3$, can be used for the extraction of two independent effective three-body couplings from the measured ground-state spectrum of three pions.
We present the three-pion spectrum with maximal isospin in a finite volume determined from lattice QCD, including excited states in addition to the ground states across various irreducible representations at zero and nonzero total momentum. The required correlation functions, from which the spectrum is extracted, are computed using a newly implemented algorithm which speeds up the computation by more than an order of magnitude. On a subset of the data we extract a nonzero value of the three-pion threshold scattering amplitude using the $1/L$ expansion of the three-particle quantization conditi…
In this contribution we investigate the phase diagram of QCD in the presence of an isospin chemical potential. To alleviate the infrared problems of the theory associated with pion condensation, we introduce the pionic source as an infrared regulator. We discuss various methods to extrapolate the results to vanishing pionic source, including a novel method based on the singular value spectrum of the massive Dirac operator, a leading-order reweighting and a spline Monte-Carlo fit. Our main results concern the phase transition boundary between the normal and the pion condensation phases and the …
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 present a generalization of the relativistic, finite-volume, three-particle quantization condition for non-identical pions in isosymmetric QCD. The resulting formalism allows one to use discrete finite-volume energies, determined using lattice QCD, to constrain scattering amplitudes for all possible values of two- and three-pion isospin. As for the case of identical pions considered previously, the result splits into two steps: The first defines a non-perturbative function with roots equal to the allowed energies, $E_n(L)$, in a given cubic volume with side-length $L$. This function depends…
We study the phase diagram and the thermodynamic properties of QCD at nonzero isospin asymmetry at physical quark masses with staggered quarks. In particular, continuum results for the phase boundary between the normal and the pion condensation phases and the chiral/deconfinement transition are presented. Our findings indicate that the pion condensation phase is restricted to $T\lesssim170$~MeV for isospin chemical potentials up to 325~MeV. We also use the data to test the range of validity of the Taylor expansion method and show first results for the equation of state.
Isospin-breaking (IB) effects in the two-pion contribution to hadronic vacuum polarization (HVP) can be resonantly enhanced, if related to the interference of the $ρ(770)$ and $ω(782)$ resonances. This particular IB contribution to the pion vector form factor and thus the line shape in $e^+e^-\to π^+π^-$ can be described by the residue at the $ω$ pole - the $ρ$-$ω$ mixing parameter $ε_ω$. Here, we argue that while in general analyticity requires this parameter to be real, the radiative channels $π^0γ$, $ππγ$, $ηγ$ can induce a small phase, whose size we estimate as $δ_ε=3.5(1.0)^\circ$ by usin…
We investigate the properties of QCD at finite isospin chemical potential at zero and non-zero temperatures. This theory is not affected by the sign problem and can be simulated using Monte-Carlo techniques. With increasing isospin chemical potential and temperatures below the deconfinement transition the system changes into a phase where charged pions condense, accompanied by an accumulation of low modes of the Dirac operator. The simulations are enabled by the introduction of a pionic source into the action, acting as an infrared regulator for the theory, and physical results are obtained by…
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 results for the interaction of two kaons at maximal isospin. The calculation is based on 2+1+1 flavour gauge configurations generated by the ETM Collaboration (ETMC) featuring pion masses ranging from about 230 MeV to 450 MeV at three values of the lattice spacing. The elastic scattering length $a_0^{I=1}$ is calculated at several values of the bare strange quark and light quark masses. We find $M_K a_0 =-0.397(11)(_{-8}^{+0})$ as the result of a chiral and continuum extrapolation to the physical point. This number is compared to other lattice results.
We present results for the isospin-0 $ππ$ s-wave scattering length calculated in twisted mass lattice QCD. We use three $N_f = 2$ ensembles with unitary pion mass at its physical value, 240~MeV and 330~MeV respectively. We also use a large set of $N_f = 2 + 1 +1$ ensembles with unitary pion masses varying in the range of 230~MeV - 510~MeV at three different values of the lattice spacing. A mixed action approach with the Osterwalder-Seiler action in the valence sector is adopted to circumvent the complications arising from isospin symmetry breaking of the twisted mass quark action. Due to the r…
We calculate the energies of quarkonium bound states in the presence of a medium of nonzero isospin density using lattice QCD. The medium, created using a canonical (fixed isospin charge) approach, induces a reduction of the quarkonium energies. As the isospin density increases, the energy shifts first increase and then saturate. The saturation occurs at an isospin density close to that where previously a qualitative change in the behaviour of the energy density of the medium has been observed, which was conjectured to correspond to a transition from a pion gas to a Bose-Einstein condensed pha…
The QCD phase diagram is studied in the presence of an isospin asymmetry using continuum extrapolated staggered quarks with physical masses. In particular, we investigate the phase boundary between the normal and the pion condensation phases and the chiral/deconfinement transition. The simulations are performed with a small explicit breaking parameter in order to avoid the accumulation of zero modes and thereby stabilize the algorithm. The limit of vanishing explicit breaking is obtained by means of an extrapolation, which is facilitated by a novel improvement program employing the singular va…
Estimates of Lee-Yang zeros and a possible critical point on the pion condensate boundary in the QCD isospin phase diagram using an unbiased exponential resummation on the lattice
