No Arabic abstract
The exclusive semileptonic decay $B rightarrow pi ell u$ is a key process for the determination of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element $V_{ub}$ from the comparison of experimental rates as a function of $q^2$ with theoretically determined form factors. The sensitivity of the form factors to the $u/d$ quark mass has meant significant systematic uncertainties in lattice QCD calculations at unphysically heavy pion masses. Here we give the first lattice QCD calculations of this process for u/d quark masses going down to their physical values, calculating the $f_0$ form factor at zero recoil to 3%. We are able to resolve a long-standing controversy by showing that the soft-pion theorem result $f_0(q^2_{max}) = f_B/f_{pi}$ does hold as $m_{pi} rightarrow 0$. We use the Highly Improved Staggered Quark formalism for the light quarks and show that staggered chiral perturbation theory for the $m_{pi}$ dependence is almost identical to continuum chiral perturbation theory for $f_0$, $f_B$ and $f_{pi}$. We also give results for other processes such as $B_s rightarrow K ell u$.
We report on our calculation of the B to D^(*) ell u form factors in 2+1 flavor lattice QCD. The Mobius domain-wall action is employed for light, strange, charm and bottom quarks. At lattice cutoffs 1/a sim 2.4, 3.6 and 4.5 GeV, we simulate bottom quark masses up to 0.7/a to control discretization errors. The pion mass is as low as 230 MeV. We extrapolate the form factors to the continuum limit and physical quark masses, and make a comparison with recent phenomenological analyses.
We calculate the $B topiell u$ and $B_s to K ell u$ form factors in dynamical lattice QCD. We use the (2+1)-flavor RBC-UKQCD gauge-field ensembles generated with the domain-wall fermion and Iwasaki gauge actions. For the $b$ quarks we use the anisotropic clover action with a relativistic heavy-quark interpretation. We analyze two lattice spacings $a approx 0.11, 0.086$ fm and unitary pion masses as light as $M_pi approx 290$ MeV. We simultaneously extrapolate our numerical results to the physical light-quark masses and to the continuum and interpolate in the pion/kaon energy using SU(2) hard-pion chiral perturbation theory. We provide complete error budgets for the form factors $f_+(q^2)$ and $f_0(q^2)$ at three momenta that span the $q^2$ range accessible in our numerical simulations. We extrapolate these results to $q^2 = 0$ using a model-independent $z$-parametrization and present our final form factors as the $z$-coefficients and the matrix of correlations between them. Our results agree with other lattice determinations using staggered light quarks and provide important independent cross-checks. Both $B topiell u$ and $B_s to K ell u$ decays enable a determination of the CKM matrix element $|V_{ub}|$. To illustrate this, we perform a combined $z$-fit of our numerical $Btopiell u$ form-factor data with the experimental branching-fraction measurements leaving the relative normalization as a free parameter; we obtain $|V_{ub}| = 3.61(32) times 10^{-3}$, where the error includes statistical and systematic uncertainties. This approach can be applied to $B_sto K ell u$ decay to determine $|V_{ub}|$ once the process has been measured experimentally. Finally, in anticipation of future measurements, we make predictions for $B to piell u$ and $B_sto K ell u$ Standard-Model differential branching fractions and forward-backward asymmetries.
We determine the decay constants of the pi and K mesons on gluon field configurations from the MILC collaboration including u, d, s and c quarks. We use three values of the lattice spacing and u/d quark masses going down to the physical value. We use the w_0 parameter to fix the relative lattice spacing and f_pi to fix the overall scale. This allows us to obtain a value for f{K^+}/f{pi^+} = 1.1916(21). Comparing to the ratio of experimental leptonic decay rates gives |Vus| = 0.22564(28){Br(K^+)}(20){EM}(40){latt}(5){Vud} and the test of unitarity of the first row of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix: |Vud|^2+|Vus|^2+|Vub|^2 - 1 = 0.00009(51).
We present the first lattice QCD calculation of the $B_s$ and $B_d$ mixing parameters with physical light quark masses. We use MILC gluon field configurations that include $u$, $d$, $s$ and $c$ sea quarks at 3 values of the lattice spacing and with 3 values of the $u/d$ quark mass going down to the physical value. We use improved NRQCD for the valence $b$ quarks. Preliminary results show significant improvements over earlier values.
We report on our study of the B to D^(*) ell u semileptonic decays at zero and nonzero recoils in 2+1 flavor QCD. The Mobius domain-wall action is employed for light, charm and bottom quarks at lattice cutoffs 1/a = 2.5 and 3.6 GeV. We take bottom quark masses up to approx 2.4 times the physical charm mass to control discretization effects. The pion mass is as low as M_pi sim 310 MeV. We present our preliminary results for the relevant form factors and discuss the violation of heavy quark symmetry, which is a recent important isuue on the long-standing tension in the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element |V_{cb}| between the exclusive and inclusive decays.