No Arabic abstract
We present the first calculation of the electromagnetic form factor of the $pi$ meson at physical light quark masses. We use configurations generated by the MILC collaboration including the effect of $u$, $d$, $s$ and $c$ sea quarks with the Highly Improved Staggered Quark formalism. We work at three values of the lattice spacing on large volumes and with $u$/$d$ quark masses going down to the physical value. We study scalar and vector form factors for a range in space-like $q^2$ from 0.0 to -0.1 $mathrm{GeV}^2$ and from their shape we extract mean square radii. Our vector form factor agrees well with experiment and we find $langle r^2 rangle_V = 0.403(18)(6) ,mathrm{fm}^2$. For the scalar form factor we include quark-line disconnected contributions which have a significant impact on the radius. We give the first results for SU(3) flavour-singlet and octet scalar mean square radii, obtaining: $langle r^2 rangle_S^{mathrm{singlet}} = 0.506(38)(53) mathrm{fm}^2$ and $langle r^2 rangle_S^{mathrm{octet}} = 0.431(38)(46) mathrm{fm}^2$. We discuss the comparison with expectations from chiral perturbation theory.
We present the first lattice QCD calculation of the $B_s$ and $B_d$ mixing parameters with physical light quark masses. We use MILC gluon field configurations that include $u$, $d$, $s$ and $c$ sea quarks at 3 values of the lattice spacing and with 3 values of the $u/d$ quark mass going down to the physical value. We use improved NRQCD for the valence $b$ quarks. Preliminary results show significant improvements over earlier values.
We determine the decay constants of the pi and K mesons on gluon field configurations from the MILC collaboration including u, d, s and c quarks. We use three values of the lattice spacing and u/d quark masses going down to the physical value. We use the w_0 parameter to fix the relative lattice spacing and f_pi to fix the overall scale. This allows us to obtain a value for f{K^+}/f{pi^+} = 1.1916(21). Comparing to the ratio of experimental leptonic decay rates gives |Vus| = 0.22564(28){Br(K^+)}(20){EM}(40){latt}(5){Vud} and the test of unitarity of the first row of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix: |Vud|^2+|Vus|^2+|Vub|^2 - 1 = 0.00009(51).
The exclusive semileptonic decay $B rightarrow pi ell u$ is a key process for the determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element $V_{ub}$ from the comparison of experimental rates as a function of $q^2$ with theoretically determined form factors. The sensitivity of the form factors to the $u/d$ quark mass has meant significant systematic uncertainties in lattice QCD calculations at unphysically heavy pion masses. Here we give the first lattice QCD calculations of this process for u/d quark masses going down to their physical values, calculating the $f_0$ form factor at zero recoil to 3%. We are able to resolve a long-standing controversy by showing that the soft-pion theorem result $f_0(q^2_{max}) = f_B/f_{pi}$ does hold as $m_{pi} rightarrow 0$. We use the Highly Improved Staggered Quark formalism for the light quarks and show that staggered chiral perturbation theory for the $m_{pi}$ dependence is almost identical to continuum chiral perturbation theory for $f_0$, $f_B$ and $f_{pi}$. We also give results for other processes such as $B_s rightarrow K ell u$.
The quark flavor sector of the Standard Model is a fertile ground to look for new physics effects through a unitarity test of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. We present a lattice QCD calculation of the scalar and the vector form factors (over a large $q^2$ region including $q^2 = 0$) associated with the $D rightarrow Kl{ u}$ semi-leptonic decay. This calculation will then allow us to determine the central CKM matrix element, $V_{cs}$ in the Standard Model, by comparing the lattice QCD results for the form factors and the experimental decay rate. This form factor calculation has been performed on the $N_f =2+1+1$ MILC HISQ ensembles with the physical light quark masses.
We report on our calculation of the B to D^(*) ell u form factors in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD. The Mobius domain-wall action is employed for light, strange, charm and bottom quarks. At lattice cutoffs 1/a sim 2.4, 3.6 and 4.5 GeV, we simulate bottom quark masses up to 0.7/a to control discretization errors. The pion mass is as low as 230 MeV. We extrapolate the form factors to the continuum limit and physical quark masses, and make a comparison with recent phenomenological analyses.