In this talk we discuss the microscopic limit of QCD at nonzero chemical potential. In this domain, where the QCD partition function is under complete analytical control, we uncover an entirely new link between the spectral density of the Dirac operator and the chiral condensate: violent complex oscillations on the microscopic scale give rise to the discontinuity of the chiral condensate at zero quark mass. We first establish this relation exactly within a random matrix framework and then analyze the importance of the individual modes by Fourier analysis.
We determine the spectrum of $B_s$ 1P states using lattice QCD. For the $B_{s1}(5830)$ and $B_{s2}^*(5840)$ mesons, the results are in good agreement with the experimental values. Two further mesons are expected in the quantum channels $J^P=0^+$ and $1^+$ near the $BK$ and $B^{*}K$ thresholds. A combination of quark-antiquark and $B^{(*)}$ meson-Kaon interpolating fields are used to determine the mass of two QCD bound states below the $B^{(*)}K$ threshold, with the assumption that mixing with $B_s^{(*)}eta$ and isospin-violating decays to $B_s^{(*)}pi$ are negligible. We predict a $J^P=0^+$ bound state $B_{s0}$ with mass $m_{B_{s0}}=5.711(13)(19)$ GeV. With further assumptions motivated theoretically by the heavy quark limit, a bound state with $m_{B_{s1}}= 5.750(17)(19)$ GeV is predicted in the $J^P=1^+$ channel. The results from our first principles calculation are compared to previous model-based estimates.
We present lattice results for the isovector unpolarized parton distribution with nonperturbative RI/MOM-scheme renormalization on the lattice. In the framework of large-momentum effective field theory (LaMET), the full Bjorken-$x$ dependence of a momentum-dependent quasi-distribution is calculated on the lattice and matched to the ordinary lightcone parton distribution at one-loop order, with power corrections included. The important step of RI/MOM renormalization that connects the lattice and continuum matrix elements is detailed in this paper. A few consequences of the results are also addressed here.
The theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) encodes the strong interactions that bind quarks and gluons into nucleons and that bind nucleons into nuclei. Predictive control of QCD would allow nuclear structure and reactions as well as properties of supernovae and neutron stars to be theoretically studied from first principles. Lattice QCD can represent generic QCD predictions in terms of well-defined path integrals, but the sign and signal-to-noise problems have obstructed lattice QCD calculations of large nuclei and nuclear matter in practice. This thesis presents a statistical study of lattice QCD correlation functions, with a particular focus on characterizing the structure of the noise associated with quantum fluctuations. The signal-to-noise problem in baryon correlation functions is demonstrated to arise from a sign problem associated with Monte Carlo sampling of complex correlation functions. The phases of complex correlation functions are analyzed in the framework of circular statistics, and the time evolution of the phase is shown to resemble a heavy-tailed random walk on the unit circle. Building on these observations, a new technique called phase reweighting is investigated that involves calculations of phase differences over fixed-length time intervals. Phase reweighting allows results for hadronic observables to be extracted from large-time correlation functions with constant signal-to-noise ratios. The signal-to-noise problem re-emerges as the length of the phase-difference interval is increased. Applications of phase reweighting to meson, baryon, and two-baryon systems are discussed.
Recent developments in non-perturbative renormalization for lattice QCD are reviewed with a particular emphasis on RI/MOM scheme and its variants, RI/SMOM schemes. Summary of recent developments in Schroedinger functional scheme, as well as the summary of related topics are presented. Comparison of strong coupling constant and the strange quark mass from various methods are made.
A common problem in lattice QCD simulations on the torus is the extremely long autocorrelation time of the topological charge, when one approaches the continuum limit. The reason is the suppressed tunneling between topological sectors. The problem can be circumvented by replacing the torus with a different manifold, so that the connectivity of the configuration space is changed. This can be achieved by using open boundary conditions on the fields, as proposed earlier. It has the side effect of breaking translational invariance strongly. Here we propose to use a non-orientable manifold, and show how to define and simulate lattice QCD on it. We demonstrate in quenched simulations that this leads to a drastic reduction of the autocorrelation time. A feature of the new proposal is, that translational invariance is preserved up to exponentially small corrections. A Dirac-fermion on a non-orientable manifold poses a challenge to numerical simulations: the fermion determinant becomes complex. We propose two approaches to circumvent this problem.