Ratio of kaon and pion leptonic decay constants with $N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ Wilson-clover twisted-mass fermions


Abstract in English

We present a determination of the ratio of kaon and pion leptonic decay constants in isosymmetric QCD (isoQCD), $f_K / f_pi$, making use of the gauge ensembles produced by the Extended Twisted Mass Collaboration (ETMC) with $N_f = 2 + 1 + 1$ flavors of Wilson-clover twisted-mass quarks, including configurations close to the physical point for all dynamical flavors. The simulations are carried out at three values of the lattice spacing ranging from $sim 0.068$ to $sim 0.092$ fm with linear lattice size up to $L sim 5.5$~fm. The scale is set by the PDG value of the pion decay constant, $f_pi^{isoQCD} = 130.4~(2)$ MeV, at the isoQCD pion point, $M_pi^{isoQCD} = 135.0~(2)$ MeV, obtaining for the gradient-flow (GF) scales the values $w_0 = 0.17383~(63)$ fm, $sqrt{t_0} = 0.14436~(61)$ fm and $t_0 / w_0 = 0.11969~(62)$ fm. The data are analyzed within the framework of SU(2) Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) without resorting to the use of renormalized quark masses. Fixing the strange quark mass by using $M_K^{isoQCD} = 494.2~(4)$ MeV, we get $(f_K / f_pi)^{isoQCD} = 1.1995~(44)$ fm, where the error includes both statistical and systematic uncertainties. Implications for the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element $|V_{us}|$ and for the first-row CKM unitarity are discussed.

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