No Arabic abstract
We present the results of lattice QCD calculations of the magnetic moments of the lightest nuclei, the deuteron, the triton and ${}^3$He, along with those of the neutron and proton. These calculations, performed at quark masses corresponding to $m_pi sim 800$ MeV, reveal that the structure of these nuclei at unphysically heavy quark masses closely resembles that at the physical quark masses. In particular, we find that the magnetic moment of ${}^3$He differs only slightly from that of a free neutron, as is the case in nature, indicating that the shell-model configuration of two spin-paired protons and a valence neutron captures its dominant structure. Similarly a shell-model-like moment is found for the triton, $mu_{{}^3{rm H}} sim mu_p$. The deuteron magnetic moment is found to be equal to the nucleon isoscalar moment within the uncertainties of the calculations.
The binding energies of a range of nuclei and hypernuclei with atomic number A <= 4 and strangeness |s| <= 2, including the deuteron, di-neutron, H-dibaryon, 3He, Lambda 3He, Lambda 4He, and Lambda Lambda 4He, are calculated in the limit of flavor-SU(3) symmetry at the physical strange quark mass with quantum chromodynamics (without electromagnetic interactions). The nuclear states are extracted from Lattice QCD calculations performed with n_f=3 dynamical light quarks using an isotropic clover discretization of the quark-action in three lattice volumes of spatial extent L ~ 3.4 fm, 4.5 fm and 6.7 fm, and with a single lattice spacing b ~ 0.145 fm.
Moments of the quark density, helicity, and transversity distributions are calculated in unquenched lattice QCD. Calculations of proton matrix elements of operators corresponding to these moments through the operator product expansion have been performed on $16^3 times 32$ lattices for Wilson fermions at $beta = 5.6$ using configurations from the SESAM collaboration and at $beta = 5.5$ using configurations from SCRI. One-loop perturbative renormalization corrections are included. At quark masses accessible in present calculations, there is no statistically significant difference between quenched and full QCD results, indicating that the contributions of quark-antiquark excitations from the Dirac Sea are small. Close agreement between calculations with cooled configurations containing essentially only instantons and the full gluon configurations indicates that quark zero modes associated with instantons play a dominant role. Naive linear extrapolation of the full QCD calculation to the physical pion mass yields results inconsistent with experiment. Extrapolation to the chiral limit including the physics of the pion cloud can resolve this discrepancy and the requirements for a definitive chiral extrapolation are described.
The interactions between two octet baryons are studied at low energies using lattice QCD (LQCD) with larger-than-physical quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of $m_{pi}sim 450$ MeV and a kaon mass of $m_{K}sim 596$ MeV. The two-baryon systems that are analyzed range from strangeness $S=0$ to $S=-4$ and include the spin-singlet and triplet $NN$, $Sigma N$ ($I=3/2$), and $XiXi$ states, the spin-singlet $SigmaSigma$ ($I=2$) and $XiSigma$ ($I=3/2$) states, and the spin-triplet $Xi N$ ($I=0$) state. The $s$-wave scattering phase shifts, low-energy scattering parameters, and binding energies when applicable, are extracted using Luschers formalism. While the results are consistent with most of the systems being bound at this pion mass, the interactions in the spin-triplet $Sigma N$ and $XiXi$ channels are found to be repulsive and do not support bound states. Using results from previous studies at a larger pion mass, an extrapolation of the binding energies to the physical point is performed and is compared with experimental values and phenomenological predictions. The low-energy coefficients in pionless EFT relevant for two-baryon interactions, including those responsible for $SU(3)$ flavor-symmetry breaking, are constrained. The $SU(3)$ symmetry is observed to hold approximately at the chosen values of the quark masses, as well as the $SU(6)$ spin-flavor symmetry, predicted at large $N_c$. A remnant of an accidental $SU(16)$ symmetry found previously at a larger pion mass is further observed. The $SU(6)$-symmetric EFT constrained by these LQCD calculations is used to make predictions for two-baryon systems for which the low-energy scattering parameters could not be determined with LQCD directly in this study, and to constrain the coefficients of all leading $SU(3)$ flavor-symmetric interactions, demonstrating the predictive power of two-baryon EFTs matched to LQCD.
The course begins with an introduction to the Standard Model, viewed as an effective field theory. Experimental and theoretical limits on the energy scales at which New Physics can appear, as well as current constraints on quark flavor parameters, are reviewed. The role of lattice QCD in obtaining these constraints is described. A second section is devoted to explaining the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism for quark flavor mixing and CP violation, and to detailing its most salient features. The third section is dedicated to the study of K -> pi pi decays. It comprises discussions of indirect CP violation through K^0-bar K^0 mixing, of the Delta I=1/2 rule and of direct CP violation. It presents some of the lattice QCD tools required to describe these phenomena ab initio.
The low-energy neutron-Sigma^- interactions determine, in part, the role of the strange quark in dense matter, such as that found in astrophysical environments. The scattering phase shifts for this system are obtained from a numerical evaluation of the QCD path integral using the technique of Lattice QCD. Our calculations, performed at a pion mass of m_pi ~ 389 MeV in two large lattice volumes, and at one lattice spacing, are extrapolated to the physical pion mass using effective field theory. The interactions determined from QCD are consistent with those extracted from hyperon-nucleon experimental data within uncertainties, and strengthen theoretical arguments that the strange quark is a crucial component of dense nuclear matter.