No Arabic abstract
We study the mass spectra of excited baryons with the use of the lattice QCD simulations. We focus our attention on the problem of the level ordering between the positive-parity excited state N(1440) (the Roper resonance) and the negative-parity excited state N^*(1535). Nearly perfect parity projection is accomplished by combining the quark propagators with periodic and anti-periodic boundary conditions in the temporal direction. Then we extract the spectral functions from the lattice data by utilizing the maximum entropy method. We observe that the masses of the N and N^* states are close for wide range of the quark masses (M_pi=0.61-1.22 GeV), which is in contrast to the phenomenological prediction of the quark models. The role of the Wilson doublers in the baryonic spectral functions is also studied.
First principle calculation of the QCD spectral functions (SPFs) based on the lattice QCD simulations is reviewed. Special emphasis is placed on the Bayesian inference theory and the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM), which is a useful tool to extract SPFs from the imaginary-time correlation functions numerically obtained by the Monte Carlo method. Three important aspects of MEM are (i) it does not require a priori assumptions or parametrizations of SPFs, (ii) for given data, a unique solution is obtained if it exists, and (iii) the statistical significance of the solution can be quantitatively analyzed. The ability of MEM is explicitly demonstrated by using mock data as well as lattice QCD data. When applied to lattice data, MEM correctly reproduces the low-energy resonances and shows the existence of high-energy continuum in hadronic correlation functions. This opens up various possibilities for studying hadronic properties in QCD beyond the conventional way of analyzing the lattice data. Future problems to be studied by MEM in lattice QCD are also summarized.
Excited state contamination remains one of the most challenging sources of systematic uncertainty to control in lattice QCD calculations of nucleon matrix elements and form factors. Most lattice QCD collaborations advocate for the use of high-statistics calculations at large time separations ($t_{rm sep}gtrsim1$ fm) to combat the signal-to-noise degradation. In this work we demonstrate that, for the nucleon axial charge, $g_A$, the alternative strategy of utilizing a large number of relatively low-statistics calculations at short to medium time separations ($0.2lesssim t_{rm sep}lesssim1$ fm), combined with a multi-state analysis, provides a more robust and economical method of quantifying and controlling the excited state systematic uncertainty, including correlated late-time fluctuations that may bias the ground state. We show that two classes of excited states largely cancel in the ratio of the three-point to two-point functions, leaving the third class, the transition matrix elements, as the dominant source of contamination. On an $m_piapprox310$ MeV ensemble, we observe the expected exponential suppression of excited state contamination in the Feynman-Hellmann correlation function relative to the standard three-point function; the excited states of the regular three-point function reduce to the 1% level for $t_{rm sep} >2$ fm while, for the Feynman-Hellmann correlation function, they are suppressed to 1% at $t_{rm sep}approx1$ fm. Independent analyses of the three-point and Feynman-Hellmann correlators yield consistent results for the ground state. However, a combined analysis allows for a more detailed and robust understanding of the excited state contamination, improving the demonstration that the ground state parameters are stable against variations in the excited state model, the number of excited states, and the truncation of early-time or late-time numerical data.
Progress in computing the spectrum of excited baryons and mesons in lattice QCD is described. Results in the zero-momentum bosonic I=1/2, S=1, T1u symmetry sector of QCD using a correlation matrix of 58 operators are presented. All needed Wick contractions are efficiently evaluated using a stochastic method of treating the low-lying modes of quark propagation that exploits Laplacian Heaviside quark-field smearing. Level identification using probe operators is discussed.
Working with a large basis of covariant derivative-based meson interpolating fields we demonstrate the feasibility of reliably extracting multiple excited states using a variational method. The study is performed on quenched anisotropic lattices with clover quarks at the charm mass. We demonstrate how a knowledge of the continuum limit of a lattice interpolating field can give additional spin-assignment information, even at a single lattice spacing, via the overlap factors of interpolating field and state. Excited state masses are systematically high with respect to quark potential model predictions and, where they exist, experimental states. We conclude that this is most likely a result of the quenched approximation.
We investigate the excited states of the nucleon using $N_f=2$ twisted mass gauge configurations with pion masses in the range of about 270 MeV to 450 MeV and one ensemble of $N_f=2$ Clover fermions at almost physical pion mass. We use two different sets of variational bases and study the resulting generalized eigenvalue problem. We present results for the two lowest positive and negative parity states.