Determining the spectrum of hadronic excitations from Monte Carlo simulations requires the use of interpolating operators that couple to multi-particle states. Recent algorithmic advances have made the inclusion of multi-hadron operators in spectroscopy calculations a practical reality. In this talk, a procedure for constructing a set of multi-hadron interpolators that project onto the states of interest is described. To aid in the interpretation of simulation data, operators are designed to transform irreducibly under the lattice symmetry group. The identification of a set of optimal single-hadron interpolators for states with non-zero momenta is an essential intermediate step in this analysis.
The design and implementation of large sets of spatially-extended, gauge-invariant operators for use in determining the spectrum of baryons in lattice QCD computations are described. Group-theoretical projections onto the irreducible representations of the symmetry group of a cubic spatial lattice are used in all isospin channels. The operators are constructed to maximize overlaps with the low-lying states of interest, while minimizing the number of sources needed in computing the required quark propagators. Issues related to the identification of the spin quantum numbers of the states in the continuum limit are addressed.
Multi-hadron operators are crucial for reliably extracting the masses of excited states lying above multi-hadron thresholds in lattice QCD Monte Carlo calculations. The construction of multi-hadron operators with significant coupling to the lowest-lying multi-hadron states of interest involves combining single hadron operators of various momenta. The design and implementation of large sets of spatially-extended single-hadron operators of definite momentum and their combinations into two-hadron operators are described. The single hadron operators are all assemblages of gauge-covariantly-displaced, smeared quark fields. Group-theoretical projections onto the irreducible representations of the symmetry group of a cubic spatial lattice are used in all isospin channels. Tests of these operators on 24^3 x 128 and 32^3 x 256 anisotropic lattices using a stochastic method of treating the low-lying modes of quark propagation which exploits Laplacian Heaviside quark-field smearing are presented. The method provides reliable estimates of all needed correlations, even those that are particularly difficult to compute, such as eta eta -> eta eta in the scalar channel, which involves the subtraction of a large vacuum expectation value. A new glueball operator is introduced, and the evaluation of the mixing of this glueball operator with a quark-antiquark operator, pi-pi, and eta-eta operators is shown to be feasible.
We describe a method to construct irreducible baryon operators using all-to-all quark propagators. It was demonstrated earlier that a large basis of extended baryon operators on anisotropic, quenched lattices can be used to reliably extract the masses of 5 or more excited states in the nucleon channel. All-to-all quark propagators are expected to be needed when studying these excited states on light, dynamical configurations because contributions from multi-particle states are expected to be significant. The dilution method is used to approximate the all-to-all quark propagators. Low-lying eigenmodes can also be used if necessary. For efficient computation of matrix elements of the interpolating operators, the algorithms should exploit the fact that many extended baryon operators can be obtained from the different linear combinations of three-quark colour-singlet operators. The sparseness of the diluted noise vectors also afford several computation simplifications. Some preliminary results are presented for nucleon effective masses.
The positive-parity nucleon spectrum is studied in 2 + 1 flavour lattice QCD in an attempt to discover novel low-lying energy eigenstates in the region of the Roper resonance. In this work, we employ standard three-quark interpolating fields and introduce new local five-quark meson-baryon operators that hold the possibility of revealing new states that have been missed in previous studies. Motivated by phenomenological arguments, five-quark interpolators based on the $sigma{N}$, $pi{N}$ and $a_0{N}$ channels are constructed. Despite the introduction of qualitatively different operators, no novel energy levels are extracted near the regime of the Roper resonance.
In Nature the excited states of the hadron spectrum appear as resonances. Consequently, there has been significant interest in studying the excited baryon spectrum using lattice QCD. With this in mind we perform spectroscopic calculations with five-quark interpolating fields. Stochastic estimation techniques are used in order to calculate the loop propagators, with dilution in spin, colour and time implemented as a means of variance reduction. We present effective mass plots extracted from these five-quark interpolators, and examine the contributions from fully-connected and loop-containing pieces of the correlation function, keeping in mind their use in future corre- lation matrix studies.