No Arabic abstract
In this article, we review the HAL QCD method to investigate baryon-baryon interactions such as nuclear forces in lattice QCD. We first explain our strategy in detail to investigate baryon-baryon interactions by defining potentials in field theories such as QCD. We introduce the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter (NBS) wave functions in QCD for two baryons below the inelastic threshold. We then define the potential from NBS wave functions in terms of the derivative expansion, which is shown to reproduce the scattering phase shifts correctly below the inelastic threshold. Using this definition, we formulate a method to extract the potential in lattice QCD. Secondly, we discuss pros and cons of the HAL QCD method, by comparing it with the conventional method, where one directly extracts the scattering phase shifts from the finite volume energies through the Luschers formula. We give several theoretical and numerical evidences that the conventional method combined with the naive plateau fitting for the finite volume energies in the literature so far fails to work on baryon-baryon interactions due to contaminations of elastic excited states. On the other hand, we show that such a serious problem can be avoided in the HAL QCD method by defining the potential in an energy-independent way. We also discuss systematics of the HAL QCD method, in particular errors associated with a truncation of the derivative expansion. Thirdly, we present several results obtained from the HAL QCD method, which include (central) nuclear force, tensor force, spin-orbital force, and three nucleon force. We finally show the latest results calculated at the nearly physical pion mass, $m_pi simeq 146$ MeV, including hyperon forces which lead to form $OmegaOmega$ and $NOmega$ dibaryons.
There exist two methods to study two-baryon systems in lattice QCD: the direct method which extracts eigenenergies from the plateaux of the temporal correlator and the HAL QCD method which extracts observables from the non-local potential associated with the tempo-spatial correlator. Although the two methods should give the same results theoretically, qualitatively different results have been reported. Recently, we pointed out that the separation of the ground state from the excited states is crucial to obtain sensible results in the former, while both states provide useful signals in the latter. In this paper, we identify the contribution of each state in the direct method by decomposing the two-baryon correlators into the finite-volume eigenmodes obtained from the HAL QCD method. We consider the $XiXi$ system in the $^1$S$_0$ channel at $m_pi = 0.51$ GeV in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD using the wall and smeared quark sources. We demonstrate that the pseudo-plateau at early time slices (t = 1~2 fm) from the smeared source in the direct method indeed originates from the contamination of the excited states, and the true plateau with the ground state saturation is realized only at t > 5~15 fm corresponding to the inverse of the lowest excitation energy. We also demonstrate that the two-baryon operator can be optimized by utilizing the finite-volume eigenmodes, so that (i) the finite-volume energy spectra from the HAL QCD method agree with those from the optimized temporal correlator and (ii) the correct spectra would be accessed in the direct method only if highly optimized operators are employed. Thus we conclude that the long-standing issue on the consistency between the Luschers finite volume method and the HAL QCD method for two baryons is now resolved: They are consistent with each other quantitatively only if the excited contamination is properly removed in the former.
We report the recent progress on the determination of three-nucleon forces (3NF) in lattice QCD. We utilize the Nambu-Bethe-Salpeter (NBS) wave function to define the potential in quantum field theory, and extract two-nucleon forces (2NF) and 3NF on equal footing. The enormous computational cost for calculating multi-baryon correlators on the lattice is drastically reduced by developing a novel contraction algorithm (the unified contraction algorithm). Quantum numbers of the three-nucleon (3N) system are chosen to be (I, J^P)=(1/2,1/2^+) (the triton channel), and we extract 3NF in which three nucleons are aligned linearly with an equal spacing. Lattice QCD simulations are performed using N_f=2 dynamical clover fermion configurations at the lattice spacing of a = 0.156 fm on a 16^3 x 32 lattice with a large quark mass corresponding to m(pi)= 1.13 GeV. Repulsive 3NF is found at short distance.
We make a detailed comparison between the direct method and the HAL QCD potential method for the baryon-baryon interactions, taking the $XiXi$ system at $m_pi= 0.51$ GeV in 2+1 flavor QCD and using both smeared and wall quark sources. The energy shift $Delta E_mathrm{eff}(t)$ in the direct method shows the strong dependence on the choice of quark source operators, which means that the results with either (or both) source are false. The time-dependent HAL QCD method, on the other hand, gives the quark source independent $XiXi$ potential, thanks to the derivative expansion of the potential, which absorbs the source dependence to the next leading order correction. The HAL QCD potential predicts the absence of the bound state in the $XiXi$($^1$S$_0$) channel at $m_pi= 0.51$ GeV, which is also confirmed by the volume dependence of finite volume energy from the potential. We also demonstrate that the origin of the fake plateau in the effective energy shift $Delta E_mathrm{eff}(t)$ at $t sim 1$ fm can be clarified by a few low-lying eigenfunctions and eigenvalues on the finite volume derived from the HAL QCD potential, which implies that the ground state saturation of $XiXi$($^1$S$_0$) requires $t sim 10$ fm in the direct method for the smeared source on $(4.3 mathrm{fm})^3$ lattice, while the HAL QCD method does not suffer from such a problem.
A comparative study between the Luschers finite volume method and the time-dependent HAL QCD method is given for the $XiXi$($^1mathrm{S}_0$) interaction as an illustrative example. By employing the smeared source and the wall source for the interpolating operators, we show that the effective energy shifts $Delta E_{rm eff} (t)$ in Luschers method do not agree between different sources, yet both exhibit fake plateaux. On the other hand, the interaction kernels $V(vec{r})$ obtained from the two sources in the HAL QCD method agree with each other already for modest values of $t$. We show that the energy eigenvalues $Delta E(L)$ in finite lattice volumes ($L^3$) calculated by $V(vec{r})$ indicate that there is no bound state in the $XiXi(^1mathrm{S}_0)$ channel at $m_{pi}=0.51$ GeV in 2+1 flavor QCD.
Single state saturation of the temporal correlation function is a key condition to extract physical observables such as energies and matrix elements of hadrons from lattice QCD simulations. A method commonly employed to check the saturation is to seek for a plateau of the observables for large Euclidean time. Identifying the plateau in the cases having nearby states, however, is non-trivial and one may even be misled by a fake plateau. Such a situation takes place typically for the system with two or more baryons. In this study, we demonstrate explicitly the danger from a possible fake plateau in the temporal correlation functions mainly for two baryons ($XiXi$ and $NN$), and three and four baryons ($^3{rm He}$ and $^4{rm He})$ as well, employing (2+1)-flavor lattice QCD at $m_{pi}=0.51$ GeV on four lattice volumes with $L=$ 2.9, 3.6, 4.3 and 5.8 fm. Caution is given for drawing conclusion on the bound $NN$, $3N$ and $4N$ systems only based on the temporal correlation functions.