We review a relativistic approach to the heavy quark physics in lattice QCD by applying a relativistic $O(a)$ improvement to the massive Wilson quark action on the lattice. After explaining how power corrections of $m_Q a$ can be avoided and remaining uncertainties are reduced to be of order $(aLambda_{rm QCD})^2$, we demonstrate a determination of four improvement coefficients in the action up to one-loop level in a mass dependent way. We also show a perturbative determination of mass dependent renormalization factors and $O(a)$ improvement coefficients for the vector and axial vector currents. Some preliminary results of numerical simulations are also presented.
We discuss the improvement of bilinear fermionic operators for Ginsparg-Wilson fermions. We present explicit formulae for improved Greens functions, which apply both on-shell and off-shell.
We perform a non-perturbative determination of the O(a)-improvement coefficient c_SW for the Wilson quark action in three-flavor QCD with the plaquette gauge action. Numerical simulations are carried out in a range of beta=12.0-5.2 on a single lattice size of 8^3x16 employing the Schrodinger functional setup of lattice QCD. As our main result, we obtain an interpolation formula for c_SW and the critical hopping parameter K_c as a function of the bare coupling. This enables us to remove O(a) scaling violation from physical observables in future numerical simulation in the wide range of beta. Our analysis with a perturbatively modified improvement condition for c_SW suggests that finite volume effects in c_SW are not large on the 8^3x16 lattice. We investigate N_f dependence of c_SW by additional simulations for N_f=4, 2 and 0 at beta=9.6. As a preparatory step for this study, we also determine c_SW in two-flavor QCD at beta=5.2. At this beta, several groups carried out large-scale calculations of the hadron spectrum, while no systematic determination of c_SW has been performed.
We perform a nonperturbative determination of the $O(a)$-improvement coefficient $c_{rm SW}$ and the critical hopping parameter $kappa_c$ for $N_f$=3, 2, 0 flavor QCD with the RG-improved gauge action using the Schrodinger functional method. In order to interpolate $c_{rm SW}$ and $kappa_c$ as a function of the bare coupling, a wide range of $beta$ from the weak coupling region to the moderately strong coupling points used in large-scale simulations is studied. Corrections at finite lattice size of $O(a/L)$ turned out to be large for the RG-improved gauge action, and hence we make the determination at a size fixed in physical units using a modified improvement condition. This enables us to avoid $O(a)$ scaling violations which would remain in physical observables if $c_{rm SW}$ determined for a fixed lattice size $L/a$ is used in numerical simulations.
We present results for the light quark masses for the Wilson quark action obtained with the PCAC relation for the one-link extended axial vector current in quenched QCD at $beta=5.9-6.5$. This method leads to a remarkable improvement of scaling behavior of the light quark masses compared to the conventional method. We obtain ${bar m}_l=3.87(37)$MeV for the averaged up and down quark mass and ${bar m}_s=97(9)$MeV for the strange quark mass in the ${barMS}$ scheme at $mu=2$GeV.
We present preliminary results of a new lattice computation of hadronic matrix elements of baryon number violating operators which appear in the low-energy effective Lagrangian of (SUSY-)Grand Unified Theories. The contribution of irrelevant form factor which has caused an underestimate of the matrix elements in previous studies is subtracted in this calculation. Our results are 2$sim$4 times larger than the most conservative values often employed in phenomenological analyses of nucleon decay with specific GUT models.