From the overlap lattice quark propagator calculated in the Landau gauge, we determine the quark chiral condensate by fitting operator product expansion formulas to the lattice data. The quark propagators are computed on domain wall fermion configurations generated by the RBC-UKQCD Collaborations with $N_f=2+1$ flavors. Three ensembles with different light sea quark masses are used at one lattice spacing $1/a=1.75(4)$ GeV. We obtain $langlebarpsipsirangle^{overline{rm MS}}(2mbox{ GeV})=(-305(15)(21)mbox{ MeV})^3$ in the SU(2) chiral limit.
The quark propagator at finite temperature is investigated using quenched gauge configurations. The propagator form factors are investigated for temperatures above and below the gluon deconfinement temperature $T_c$ and for the various Matsubara frequencies. Significant differences between the functional behaviour below and above $T_c$ are observed both for the quark wave function and the running quark mass. The results for the running quark mass indicate a strong link between gluon dynamics, the mechanism for chiral symmetry breaking and the deconfinement mechanism. For temperatures above $T_c$ and for low momenta, our results support also a description of quarks as free quasi-particles.
We use overlap fermions as valence quarks to calculate meson masses in a wide quark mass range on the $2+1$-flavor domain-wall fermion gauge configurations generated by the RBC and UKQCD Collaborations. The well-defined quark masses in the overlap fermion formalism and the clear valence quark mass dependence of meson masses observed from the calculation facilitate a direct derivation of physical current quark masses through a global fit to the lattice data, which incorporates $O(a^2)$ and $O(m_c^4a^4)$ corrections, chiral extrapolation, and quark mass interpolation. Using the physical masses of $D_s$, $D_s^*$ and $J/psi$ as inputs, Sommers scale parameter $r_0$ and the masses of charm quark and strange quark in the $overline{rm MS}$ scheme are determined to be $r_0=0.465(4)(9)$ fm, $m_c^{overline{rm MS}}(2,{rm GeV})=1.118(6)(24)$ GeV (or $m_c^{overline{rm MS}}(m_c)=1.304(5)(20)$ GeV), and $m_s^{overline{rm MS}}(2,{rm GeV})=0.101(3)(6),{rm GeV}$, respectively. Furthermore, we observe that the mass difference of the vector meson and the pseudoscalar meson with the same valence quark content is proportional to the reciprocal of the square root of the valence quark masses. The hyperfine splitting of charmonium, $M_{J/psi}-M_{eta_c}$, is determined to be 119(2)(7) MeV, which is in good agreement with the experimental value. We also predict the decay constant of $D_s$ to be $f_{D_s}=254(2)(4)$ MeV. The masses of charmonium $P$-wave states $chi_{c0}, chi_{c1}$ and $h_c$ are also in good agreement with experiments.
We compute the magnetic susceptibility of the quark condensate and the polarization of quarks at zero temperature and in a uniform magnetic background. Our theoretical framework consists of two chiral models that allow to treat self-consistently the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry: the linear $sigma-$model coupled to quarks, dubbed quark-meson model, and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. We also perform analytic estimates of the same quantities within the renormalized quark-meson model, both in the regimes of weak and strong fields. Our numerical results are in agreement with the recent literature; moreover, we confirm previous Lattice findings, related to the saturation of the polarization at large fields.
We calculate the lattice quark propagator in Coulomb gauge both from dynamical and quenched configurations. We show that in the continuum limit both the static and full quark propagator are multiplicatively renormalizable. From the propagator we extract the quark renormalization function Z(|p|) and the running mass M(|p|) and extrapolate the latter to the chiral limit. We find that M(|p|) practically coincides with the corresponding Landau gauge function for small momenta. The computation of M(|p|) can be however made more efficient in Coulomb gauge; this can lead to a better determination of the chiral mass and the quark anomalous dimension. Moreover from the structure of the full propagator we can read off an expression for the dispersion relation of quarks, compatible with an IR divergent effective energy. If confirmed on larger volumes this finding would allow to extend the Gribov-Zwanziger confinement mechanism to the fermionic sector of QCD.
We use over-improved stout-link smearing to investigate the presence and nature of instantons on the lattice. We find that smearing can remove short-range effects with little damage to the long-range structure of the gauge field, and that after around 50 sweeps this process is complete. There are more significant risks for very high levels of smearing beyond 100 sweeps. We are thus able to produce gauge configurations dominated by instanton effects. We then calculate the overlap quark propagator on these configurations, and thus the non-perturbative mass function. We find that smeared configurations reproduce the majority of dynamical mass generation, and conclude that instantons are primarily responsible for the dynamical generation of mass.