No Arabic abstract
The quark-connected and the quark-disconnected Wick contractions contributing to the pions scalar form factor are computed in the two and in the three flavour chiral effective theory at next-to-leading order. While the quark-disconnected contribution to the form factor itself turns out to be power-counting suppressed its contribution to the scalar radius is of the same order of magnitude as the one of the quark-connected contribution. This result underlines that neglecting quark-disconnected contributions in simulations of lattice QCD can cause significant systematic effects. The technique used to derive these predictions can be applied to a large class of observables relevant for QCD-phenomenology.
Expressions for the Wick contractions contributing to the scalar pion form-factor were computed model-independently in chiral perturbation theory at next-to-leading order. The results reveal correlations amongst the different contractions in terms of low-energy constants and allow for extrapolating lattice data for individual Wick contractions. The quark disconnected contribution to the real part of the form factor turns out to be suppressed with respect to the quark connected one. The corresponding contribution to the scalar radius has the same size as the connected contribution and can therefore not be neglected.
We present a comprehensive study of the electromagnetic form factor, the decay constant and the mass of the pion computed in lattice QCD with two degenerate O(a)-improved Wilson quarks at three different lattice spacings in the range 0.05-0.08fm and pion masses between 280 and 630MeV at m_pi L >~ 4. Using partially twisted boundary conditions and stochastic estimators, we obtain a dense set of precise data points for the form factor at very small momentum transfers, allowing for a model-independent extraction of the charge radius. Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) augmented by terms which model lattice artefacts is then compared to the data. At next-to-leading order the effective theory fails to produce a consistent description of the full set of pion observables but describes the data well when only the decay constant and mass are considered. By contrast, using the next-to-next-to-leading order expressions to perform global fits result in a consistent description of all data. We obtain <r^2_pi>=0.481(33)(13)fm^2 as our final result for the charge radius at the physical point. Our calculation also yields estimates for the pion decay constant in the chiral limit, F_pi/F=1.080(16)(6), the quark condensate, Sigma^{1/3}_MSbar(2GeV)=261(13)(1)MeV and several low-energy constants of SU(2) ChPT.
We compute the electromagnetic form factor of a pion with mass m_pi=330MeV at low values of Q^2equiv -q^2, where q is the momentum transfer. The computations are performed in a lattice simulation using an ensemble of the RBC/UKQCD collaborations gauge configurations with Domain Wall Fermions and the Iwasaki gauge action with an inverse lattice spacing of 1.73(3)GeV. In order to be able to reach low momentum transfers we use partially twisted boundary conditions using the techniques we have developed and tested earlier. For the pion of mass 330MeV we find a charge radius given by <r_pi^2>_{330MeV}=0.354(31)fm^2 which, using NLO SU(2) chiral perturbation theory, extrapolates to a value of <r_pi^2>=0.418(31)fm^2 for a physical pion, in agreement with the experimentally determined result. We confirm that there is a significant reduction in computational cost when using propagators computed from a single time-slice stochastic source compared to using those with a point source; for m_pi=330MeV and volume (2.74fm)^3 we find the reduction is approximately a factor of 12.
A comparison of the linear sigma model (L$sigma$M) and Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) predictions for pion and kaon dynamics is presented. Lowest and next-to-leading order terms in the ChPT amplitudes are reproduced if one restricts to scalar resonance exchange. Some low energy constants of the order $p^4$ ChPT Lagrangian are fixed in terms of scalar meson masses. Present values of these low energy constants are compatible with the L$sigma$M dynamics. We conclude that more accurate values would be most useful either to falsify the L$sigma$M or to show its capability to shed some light on the controversial scalar physics.
We present a comprehensive analysis of form factors for two light pseudoscalar mesons induced by scalar, vector, and tensor quark operators. The theoretical framework is based on a combination of unitarized chiral perturbation theory and dispersion relations. The low-energy constants in chiral perturbation theory are fixed by a global fit to the available data of the two-meson scattering phase shifts. Each form factor derived from unitarized chiral perturbation theory is improved by iteratively applying a dispersion relation. This study updates the existing results in the literature and explores those that have not been systematically studied previously, in particular the two-meson tensor form factors within unitarized chiral perturbation theory. We also discuss the applications of these form factors as mandatory inputs for low-energy phenomena, such as the semi-leptonic decays $B_sto pi^+pi^-ell^+ell^-$ and the $tau$ lepton decay $taurightarrowpi^{-}pi^{0} u_{tau}$, in searches for physics beyond the Standard Model.