No Arabic abstract
Highlights from recent computations in lattice QCD involving baryons are presented. Calculations of the proton mass and spin decompositions are discussed, a percent level determination of the nucleon axial coupling is described, and determinations of the proton and neutron electromagnetic form factors and light-cone parton distribution functions are outlined. Recent results applying the so-called L{u}scher method to meson-baryon systems are presented. Key points emphasized are that much better precision with disconnected diagrams is being achieved, incorporating multi-hadron operators is now feasible, and more and more studies are being done with physical quark masses.
Recent advances in lattice field theory, in computer technology and in chiral perturbation theory have enabled lattice QCD to emerge as a powerful quantitative tool in understanding hadron structure. I describe recent progress in the computation of the nucleon form factors and moments of parton distribution functions, before proceeding to describe lattice studies of the Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs). In particular, I show how lattice studies of GPDs contribute to building a three-dimensional picture of the proton. I conclude by describing the prospects for studying the structure of resonances from lattice QCD.
Nucleon-nucleon (NN) potential is studied by lattice QCD simulations in the quenched approximation, using the plaquette gauge action and the Wilson quark action on a 32^4 (simeq (4.4 fm)^4) lattice. A NN potential V_{NN}(r) is defined from the equal-time Bethe-Salpeter amplitude with a local interpolating operator for the nucleon. By studying the NN interaction in the ^1S_0 and ^3S_1 channels, we show that the central part of V_{NN}(r) has a strong repulsive core of a few hundred MeV at short distances (r alt 0.5 fm) surrounded by an attractive well at medium and long distances. These features are consistent with the known phenomenological features of the nuclear force.
We calculate potentials between a proton and a $Xi^0$ (hyperon with strangeness -2) through the equal-time Bethe-Salpeter wave function, employing quenched lattice QCD simulations with the plaquette gauge action and the Wilson quark action on (4.5 fm)^4 lattice at the lattice spacing $a simeq 0.14$ fm. The ud quark mass in our study corresponds to $m_{pi}simeq 0.37$ and 0.51 GeV, while the s quark mass corresponds to the physical value of $m_K$. The central $p Xi^0$ potential has a strong (weak) repulsive core in the $^1S_0$ ($^3S_1$) channel for $r lsim 0.6$ fm, while the potential has attractive well at the medium and long distances (0.6 fm $lsim r lsim 1.2$ fm) in both channels. The sign of the $p Xi^0$ scattering length and its quark mass dependence indicate a net attraction in both channels at low energies.
The charmonium-nucleon interaction is studied by the time-dependent HAL QCD method. We use a larger lattice volume and the relativistic heavy quark action for charm quark to obtain less systematic errors than those in our previous study. As a result, the sizable J/$psi$N hyperfine splitting is observed, indicating that the spin-spin interaction is important to understand this system quantitatively. No J/$psi$N or $eta_c$N bound state is observed below the thresholds as in the previous results.
A qualitative discussion on the range of the potentials as they result from the phenomenological meson-exchange picture and from lattice simulations by the HAL QCD Collaboration is presented. For the former pion- and/or $eta$-meson exchange are considered together with the scalar-isoscalar component of correlated $pipi /K bar K$ exchange. It is observed that the intuitive expectation for the behavior of the baryon-baryon potentials for large separations, associated with the exchange of one and/or two pions, does not always match with the potentials extracted from the lattice simulations. Only in cases where pion exchange provides the longest ranged contribution, like in the $Xi N$ system, a reasonable qualitative agreement between the phenomenological and the lattice QCD potentials is found for baryon-baryon separations of $r gtrsim 1$ fm. For the $Omega N$ and $OmegaOmega$ interactions where isospin conservation rules out one-pion exchange a large mismatch is observed, with the potentials by the HAL QCD Collaboration being much longer ranged and much stronger at large distances as compared to the phenomenological expectation. This casts some doubts on the applicability of using these potentials in few- or many-body systems.