No Arabic abstract
The LatKMI collaboration is studying systematically the dynamical properties of N_f = 4,8,12,16 SU(3) gauge theories using lattice simulations with (HISQ) staggered fermions. Exploring the spectrum of many-flavour QCD, and its scaling near the chiral limit, is mandatory in order to establish if one of these models realises the Walking Technicolor scenario. Although lattice technologies to study the mesonic spectrum are well developed, scalar flavour-singlet states still require extra effort to be determined. In addition, gluonic observables usually require large-statistic simulations and powerful noise-reduction techniques. In the following, we present useful spectroscopic methods to investigate scalar glueballs and scalar flavour-singlet mesons, together with the current status of the scalar spectrum in N_f = 12 QCD from the LatKMI collaboration.
We measure glueball masses and the string tension in twelve-flavour QCD, aiming at comparing the emerging gluonic spectrum to the mesonic one. When approaching the critical surface at zero quark mass, the hierarchy of masses in the different sectors of the spectrum gives a new handle to determine the existence of an infrared fixed point. We describe the details of our gluonic measurements and the results obtained on a large number of gauge configurations generated with the HISQ action. In particular, we focus on the scalar glueball and its mixing with a flavour-singlet fermionic state, which is lighter than the pseudoscalar (would-be pion) state. The results are interesting in view of a light composite Higgs boson in walking technicolor theories.
In the search for a composite Higgs boson in walking technicolor models, many flavor QCD, in particular with $N_f=8$, is an attractive candidate, and has been found to have a composite flavor-singlet scalar as light as the pion. Based on lattice simulations of this theory with the HISQ action, we will present our preliminary results on the scalar decay constant using the fermionic bilinear operator, and on the mass of the lightest baryon state which could be a dark matter candidate. Combining these two results, implications for dark matter direct detection are also discussed.
SU(3) gauge theory with eight massless flavours is believed to be walking, while the corresponding twelve- and four-flavour appear IR-conformal and confining respectively. Looking at the simulations performed by the LatKMI collaboration of these theories, we use the topological susceptibility as an additional probe of the IR dynamics. By drawing a comparison with SU(3) pure gauge theory, we see a dynamical quenching effect emerge at larger number of flavours, which is suggestive of emerging near-conformal and conformal behaviour.
We explore the nature of the bulk transition observed at strong coupling in the SU(3) gauge theory with Nf=12 fermions in the fundamental representation. The transition separates a weak coupling chirally symmetric phase from a strong coupling chirally broken phase and is compatible with the scenario where conformality is restored by increasing the flavour content of a non abelian gauge theory. We explore the intriguing possibility that the observed bulk transition is associated with the occurrence of an ultraviolet fixed point (UVFP) at strong coupling, where a new theory emerges in the continuum.
We compute the spectral density of the (Hermitean) Dirac operator in Quantum Chromodynamics with two light degenerate quarks near the origin. We use CLS/ALPHA lattices generated with two flavours of O(a)-improved Wilson fermions corresponding to pseudoscalar meson masses down to 190 MeV, and with spacings in the range 0.05-0.08 fm. Thanks to the coverage of parameter space, we can extrapolate our data to the chiral and continuum limits with confidence. The results show that the spectral density at the origin is non-zero because the low modes of the Dirac operator do condense as expected in the Banks-Casher mechanism. Within errors, the spectral density turns out to be a constant function up to eigenvalues of approximately 80 MeV. Its value agrees with the one extracted from the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation.