Progress by the Lattice Hadron Physics Collaboration in determining the baryon and meson resonance spectrum of QCD using Monte Carlo methods with space-time lattices is described. The extraction of excited-state energies necessitates the evaluation of correlation matrices of sets of operators, and the importance of extended three-quark operators to capture both the radial and orbital structures of baryons is emphasized. The use of both quark-field smearing and link-field smearing in the operators is essential for reducing the couplings of the operators to the high-frequency modes and for reducing statistical noise in the correlators. The extraction of nine energy levels in a given symmetry channel is demonstrated, and identifying the continuum spin quantum numbers of the levels is discussed.
Recent results from lattice QCD simulations provide a realistic picture, based upon first principles, of~$Upsilon$ physics. We combine these results with the experimentally measured mass of the $Upsilon$~meson to obtain an accurate and reliable value for the $b$-quarks pole mass. We use two different methods, each of which yields a mass consistent with $M_b = 5.0(2)$~GeV. This corresponds to a bare mass of $M_b^0 = 4.0(1)$~GeV in our lattice theory and an $msbar$~mass of $M_b^msbar(M_b)=4.0(1)$~GeV. We discuss the implications of this result for the $c$-quark mass. ******************************************************************************* THIS IS THE VERSION WHICH WILL BE PUBLISHED IN PRL. SUBSTANTIAL MATERIAL HAS BEEN ADDED, INCLUDING RESULTS WITH DYNAMICAL FERMIONS AND A CALCULATION OF THE MSBAR MASS. *******************************************************************************
The calculation of the spectrum of QCD is key to an understanding of the strong interactions, and vital if we are to capitalize on the experimental study of the spectrum. In this paper, we describe progress towards understanding the spectrum of resonances of both mesons and baryons from lattice QCD, focusing in particular on the resonances of the $I=1/2$ nucleon states, and of charmonium mesons composed of the heavy charmed quarks.
We use a variational technique to study heavy glueballs on gauge configurations generated with 2+1 flavours of ASQTAD improved staggered fermions. The variational technique includes glueball scattering states. The measurements were made using 2150 configurations at 0.092 fm with a pion mass of 360 MeV. We report masses for 10 glueball states. We discuss the prospects for unquenched lattice QCD calculations of the oddballs.
Our knowledge about the QCD phase diagram at finite baryon chemical potential $mu_{B}$ is limited by the well known sign problem. The path integral measure, in the standard determinantal approach, becomes complex at finite $mu_{B}$ so that standard Monte Carlo techniques cannot be directly applied. As the sign problem is representation dependent, by a suitable choice of the fundamental degrees of freedom that parameterize the partition function, it can get mild enough so that reweighting techniques can be used. A successful formulation, capable to tame the sign problem, is known since decades in the limiting case $betato 0$, where performing the gauge integration first, gives rise to a dual formulation in terms of color singlets (MDP formulation). Going beyond the strong coupling limit represents a serious challenge as the gauge integrals involved in the computation are only partially known analytically and become strongly coupled for $beta>0$. We will present explict formulae for all the integral relevant for ${rm SU}(N)$ gauge theories discretised `a la Wilson, and will discuss how they can be used to obtain a positive dual formulation, valid for all $beta$, for pure Yang Mills theory.
The nucleon axial coupling, $g_A$, is a fundamental property of protons and neutrons, dictating the strength with which the weak axial current of the Standard Model couples to nucleons, and hence, the lifetime of a free neutron. The prominence of $g_A$ in nuclear physics has made it a benchmark quantity with which to calibrate lattice QCD calculations of nucleon structure and more complex calculations of electroweak matrix elements in one and few nucleon systems. There were a number of significant challenges in determining $g_A$, notably the notorious exponentially-bad signal-to-noise problem and the requirement for hundreds of thousands of stochastic samples, that rendered this goal more difficult to obtain than originally thought. I will describe the use of an unconventional computation method, coupled with ludicrously fast GPU code, access to publicly available lattice QCD configurations from MILC and access to leadership computing that have allowed these challenges to be overcome resulting in a determination of $g_A$ with 1% precision and all sources of systematic uncertainty controlled. I will discuss the implications of these results for the convergence of $SU(2)$ Chiral Perturbation theory for nucleons, as well as prospects for further improvements to $g_A$ (sub-percent precision, for which we have preliminary results) which is part of a more comprehensive application of lattice QCD to nuclear physics. This is particularly exciting in light of the new CORAL supercomputers coming online, Sierra and Summit, for which our lattice QCD codes achieve a machine-to-machine speed up over Titan of an order of magnitude.