We present a review of our numerical studies of the running coupling constant, gluon and ghost propagators, ghost-gluon vertex and ghost condensate for the case of pure SU(2) lattice gauge theory in the minimal Landau gauge. Emphasis is given to the infrared regime, in order to investigate the confinement mechanisms of QCD. We compare our results to other theoretical and phenomenological studies.
We present a strong coupling expansion that permits to develop analysis of quantum field theory in the infrared limit. Application to a quartic massless scalar field gives a massive spectrum and the propagator in this regime. We extend the approach to a pure Yang-Mills theory obtaining analogous results. The gluon propagator is compared satisfactorily with lattice results and similarly for the spectrum. Comparison with experimental low energy spectrum of QCD supports the view that $sigma$ resonance is indeed a glueball. The gluon propagator we obtained is finally used to formulate a low energy Lagrangian for QCD that reduces to a Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with all the parameters fixed by those of the full theory.
We report on the first computation of the strong running coupling at the physical point (physical pion mass) from the ghost-gluon vertex, computed from lattice simulations with three flavors of Domain Wall fermions. We find $alpha_{overline{rm MS}}(m_Z^2)=0.1172(11)$, in remarkably good agreement with the world-wide average. Our computational bridge to this value is the Taylor-scheme strong coupling, which has been revealed of great interest by itself because it can be directly related to the quark-gluon interaction kernel in continuum approaches to the QCD bound-state problem.
We compare the perturbatively calculated QCD potential to that obtained from lattice calculations in the theory without light quark flavours. We examine E_tot(r) = 2 m_pole + V_QCD(r) by re-expressing it in the MSbar mass m = m^MSbar(m^MSbar) and by choosing specific prescriptions for fixing the scale mu (dependent on r and m). By adjusting m so as to maximise the range of convergence, we show that perturbative and lattice calculations agree up to 3*r_0 ~ 7.5 GeV^-1 (r_0 is the Sommer scale) within the uncertainty of order Lambda^3 r^2.
Our ability to resolve new physics effects is, largely, limited by the precision with which we calculate. The calculation of observables in the Standard (or a new physics) Model requires knowledge of associated hadronic contributions. The precision of such calculations, and therefore our ability to leverage experiment, is typically limited by hadronic uncertainties. The only first-principles method for calculating the nonperturbative, hadronic contributions is lattice QCD. Modern lattice calculations have controlled errors, are systematically improvable, and in some cases, are pushing the sub-percent level of precision. I outline the role played by, highlight state of the art efforts in, and discuss possible future directions of lattice calculations in flavor physics.
I describe some of the many connections between lattice QCD and effective field theories, focusing in particular on chiral effective theory, and, to a lesser extent, Symanzik effective theory. I first discuss the ways in which effective theories have enabled and supported lattice QCD calculations. Particular attention is paid to the inclusion of discretization errors, for a variety of lattice QCD actions, into chiral effective theory. Several other examples of the usefulness of chiral perturbation theory, including the encoding of partial quenching and of twisted boundary conditions, are also described. In the second part of the talk, I turn to results from lattice QCD for the low energy constants of the two- and three-flavor chiral theories. I concentrate here on mesonic quantities, but the dependence of the nucleon mass on the pion mass is also discussed. Finally I describe some recent preliminary lattice QCD calculations by the MILC Collaboration relating to the three-flavor chiral limit.